Death of the DouchePad

One of the finest pleasure I experience in the workplace is to witness early adopters of immature technology. They behave like kids, my therapist would say there's a transference process between the device and the owner.

When these bozos buy the latest gadget, they quickly tour the office and demo whatever crap they bought to showcase how forward-thinking they are compared to other CGI members. They won't hesitate to pay $500 with after-tax money on some piece of electronic that won't improve their personal productivity, won't help them get laid and definitely won't bring any new revenues to the corporation. When asked about how great their new gizmo is, they invariably look upward and claim that 10 years from now whatever thing they just acquired will be common yet much more powerful and will help solve all kinds of tough problems like world hunger and socialism.

Such scenes are irritating, because these assholes keep bugging you and you loose precious billable minutes to listen to something so irrelevant you have to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to break the conversation.

The fun part though, is witnessing that same early adopter deflate slowly and painfully when "their" technology is discarded by the market.

Case in point, HP killed the TouchPad less than 2 months after its introduction and more or less announced the death of webOS, the "fantastic" technology they got from Palm. It's an epic fail, what was HP's board of directors doing all this time? Check this out, you don't want these guys sitting on YOUR board, they'll steer your company into a major ditch.

Any meth-smoking dropout living on the street would have told you the Palm acquisition and the release of the TouchPad was doomed to fail since from a strategic standpoint the product had the same price and no real benefits compared to the market leader the iPad.

Following the press release, on-line retailers started a "fire sale" to get rid of uncool TouchPads at a 80% discount.

So back to our gizmo luminaries, this was a major blow to their ego and on Monday they were acting as if their spouse had dumped them over the week-end. Long face all over, the gadget that acted a social enhancer the previous week is hidden during meetings, since owners do not want to face questions such as Oh yeah, that was the device that got axed last Friday, how does that make you feel now? How much did you pay? How about future upgrades?

Dear members, this is yet another proof that you work for the best company in the world. Since we don't invest money in - just saying the word is painful to me - R&D, you are secured from the pest of hardware and software development. Others put the shareholder's money at stake in risky ventures, and we - the service people - just harvest the mature technologies that our ultra-conservative clients pick.

If you want to impress folks in a meeting, don't use a fucking DouchePad to express your thoughts in less than 140 characters. Get your HP 12c out of your jacket and crunch numbers in RPN, that will definitely grab my attention in a positive fashion.

Pardon my French

One reader was kind enough to remind me of this priceless quote from Happy Raymond and included the link above.

As we're watching Greece, the U.S. and other deficit-prone countries spiral toward their financial death, it's comforting to remind ourselves that Curly and his financially-challenged ministers are in the driver's seat.

Ain't got no place to lay your head

Government creditors came and took your bed

Don't worry, be happy

Standard & Poors say your rent is late

They may have to litigate

Don't worry, be happy

Member's Column Day: Cheer me up

Dear FakeMike, I'm back on the job after a 3-week vacation and I'm feeling awfully depressed here in my non-descript cubicle using my underpowered PC. My whole job is so pointless. The client hates us yet he gives the firm a 2-year contract to do what his own employees are unable to do. Can you cheer me up? Christian from Montreal.

Dear Phil, look at it this way. You could be crushed on your way home by a concrete block on a tunnel because the government has ignored for the past 30 years that infrastructures require maintenance. Best case, you die instantly in your rusty Corolla. Worst case, you live but are permanently disabled and you spend the rest of your life watching reality shows and infomercials while chewing your pain medication.

It can always be worse.

You had a 3-week vacation? Who authorized this? I'm spending my summer at the office plotting our path to profitable growth until 2050 and you fucking complain to me that you are feeling kinda blue after 21 days of non-billable time? Maybe I should hit your fat butt with my latest Callaway club, that would wake you up.

I'm sorry, short temper here, I'm breathing slowly now. I loosen my grip around your virtual neck because I am a nice guy. Well that's what my therapist told me to do, he must be right, eh?

I know how you must be feeling, you checked in this morning and felt like you didn't belong in this world because your IT job is so meaningless you have a hard time explaining to your non-IT relatives what you do for a living. You check your e-mails every few minutes hoping something exciting comes along, but all you get is reminders that your time sheets has not been submitted yet.

You then check your watch, hoping that lunch time will be more interesting that the crap that awaits you in your inbox.

You daydream about your next week-end.

You pick up your iPhone and shop for a vintage motorcycle because unlike your PC it's not blocked by BlueCoat. You can't afford anything but shopping for toys is less boring that what the client expects you to perform. Or you surf IMDB for trivial information about obscure TV shows that you enjoyed in the 80's.

You call a few friends and gossip about things, you partially feel alive when you talk to some real people, not the drones working next to you.

Then lunchtime comes and you have produce nothing yet the time was billable. You meet some other unproductive friends at White Castle and you wolf down a couple of sliders and complain to each other about how bored to death you are.

You then spend your afternoon faking work, going 5 times to the men's room to play Angry Birds and using your iPhone extensively even though you topped your bandwidth for the month. And yes, all your apps are up-to-date, that didn't change from earlier today.

If this is an accurate portrait of your typical day, then rest assured dear member this is very typical of all IT workers.

I hope I cheered you up. Now get back to work and do what you're told.