I work for a company of idiots

First they tell us that intellectual property is our most unexploited resource, and we should make every effort to generate patents on every project we work on. And send out numerous memos telling that we’re not doing enough to get inventions into “Invention Tracker”. And now I find out that they’ve downsized the patent lawyers so there is only one or two people working on taking the stuff out of “Invention Tracker” and turning it into patents.

Smart move, guys. That will show those Japanese who’s the boss.

Making money off the Marching Morons

In Online Auctions, Misspelling in Ads Often Spells Cash

In case you don’t have a New York Times free registration (or don’t know one of the many fake ones floating around there), this article describes people who make good money off of eBay by looking for articles that are going for way less than they’re worth because the seller can’t spell well enough to be found by buyers. It also includes the advice that sometimes it’s the buyers who can’t spell worth a shit, so you should probably include alternate spellings in your listing so the buyers can find you.

You gotta love free enterprise, especially when it’s crafty people getting rich off of the idiots of the world.

I’ve decided…

…that there is one thing worse that the epislon sub-morons who get viruses. And that’s the idiots who wrote those “oh so helpful” mail clients that when they detect an incoming virus, they strip the virus payload and send the rest of the message back to the person in the From line of the message. Has there been a virus in the last 3 years where the address in the From line wasn’t a forgery? Who thought this would be helpful? And why is he still allowed to breathe?

At least I can filter out viruses by dropping anything with a Microsoft executable payload. But I can’t filter out these “virus reports” because they’re all different.

You must be smarter than a stick…

The Register on the “Bagle Worm”

I have a sig file that says “You must be smarter than >—- this stick to put a machine on the Internet”. People who, in this day and age, click on an email attachment in a message with a subject line of “Hi” and a body text that just consists of the line “Test, yep :)” have failed that test.

What the fuck is wrong with you Windows users? I’d say you have the brains of kelp, but that would be an insult to kelp.

Bloggers Block

I haven’t updated in a while. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that I’m busier than shit – too much to do at work, too much to do regarding Maddy’s memorial. Another is that both of my kids appear to be in total melt-down mode – one is in hospital because of anorexia and the other seems to think “not getting caught” and “doing the right thing” are totally equivalent. Another is that my dad apparently found the blog and I’m a little freaked about that, but I’m coming to terms with it. I try very hard not to censor what I write here – it’s done more for self therapy than for anybody else’s consumption, and I’m quite likely to say stuff that I wouldn’t say to people’s faces (and then say the exact opposite in a subsequent entry – I’m nothing if not self-contradictory). So guess what, dad: If you don’t like what you see here, don’t read it.