Category: Life

All right, kids, you want to know how you tell the sign of a good company when you’re interviewing? Forget what any of the books tell you about how to judge a company during a job interview. Of course, it’s easy for me to say, since I have never read a book about job interviews, but if I had, this wouldn’t be a spurious law, would it?

To gauge what a company’s employees think of it and the environment there, ask, no demand that one of the interview platoon take you to see the cafeteria or kitchenette or the little alcove where they have the coffeemaker. Of course, if they don’t have a coffeepot, leave right away (unless you’re Heather, of course).

The best places I have ever worked, at least in a white collar fashion, had clean breakrooms. Best job I ever had, the breakroom was spotless, but that’s because my duty was to clean it, werd. But six dollars an hour doesn’t support five four cats.

Coffee stains or dirty dishes on the counter can indicate a number of things, all of which are bad news for you, the new guy (or gal):

• The saps working here are jacked up all the time and are too busy to wipe up after themselves. That means the company has too few resources for what it does, and you better not have any plans on Saturday.
• The employees here delegate the cleaning up after themselves to, or worse yet assume it will be done by, underlings, ultimately the poor schmuck with only a community college degree who works afternoons to wipe out the bathrooms. If he’s busy, buddy (or buddiette), guess who’s going to be cleaning up after himself (herself) after he (she) brings the coffee to the important people? So, how long have you been here?

A clean kitchen indicates that the other employees are adults who can handle their own mistakes and spills, and that they’re concerned with giving a good first impression to the venture capitalists, board members, vendors, customers, or other employees who might wander in after them. This is good.

Of course, it could mean they’ve read this entry and are attempting to subvert NogSub Law IX, but the odds are definitely with the former.

Here’s a list of more signs you’re getting old.

I have to wonder the real age of the person who wrote this, though, because it seems hollow, as though it was compiled by a damn kid writing for us old people.

Some points:

• Your computer’s ready-mode was a black screen with a single cursor.
  There’s still just a single curser sitting at my computer. Me. Actually, my first computer’s ready screen was blue and grey. Viva la Commodore!
• And you thought it [the Pong arcade game] had the most advanced graphics imaginable.
  Look here, boy, Pong did have the most advanced graphics.

• AOL was just another start-up online service that could easily have lost out to rivals called Compuserve and Prodigy.
  Son, back in the day, we had Quantum Link, Delphi, and bulletin boards. AOL is a 1990s late bloomer.

• A 1-gig hard drive seemed as big as a warehouse. (Today, most are 40-times that.)
  Back in the day, the Lt. Kernal 1 Meg hard drive cost $1000, werd. I never had one.

• Even though there are plenty of LPs in antiques stores, you still have 400 in your attic, because deep down, you still think the format will come back.
  Dude, you cannot sell records for any decent money. Last time I tried to sell an LP or 45 was in the early 1990s, and the used music shop wouldn’t take them off my hands. So they’re up there because they’re worth more for the memories than the money. And who knows, one of these days we might find a working record player again, and when we do, it’s gonna be a party!. Albeit a party where one has to pause the beer-drinkng every couple of minutes to change or flip the record.

Now get offa my lawn!

Electric Venom’s got a post on caffeinated sausages in Germany. To sum up:

But “How does it taste?” you ask?

Dude, it keeps you awake longer so you can have more beer. Does it matter how it tastes?

But it’s more German beer.

Tonight I am drinking Peroni, whose very literature reminds us that it’s beer made by American ally. Werd. And you know, after a couple, they don’t taste too bad.

The very day I see one of these weird Chrysler Pacificas on the road, and I am thinking when did this contraption fall to Earth from the planet Minivania? I’d never heard of it. And do the owners realize that the name comes from the same root word as pacifier?

Then, the very same day, The Professor brings it up. Great minds move in tandem, so they say.

Jeez louise, I was just trying to figure out how to change the oil in a John Deere M655 54″ commercial grade lawn mower, and I am confronted with this gratuitous display of violence which only serves to remind me that I have not yet seen Freddy Vs Jason. Isn’t that a little graphic, Mr. Deere?

Cripes, I am going to have nightmares.

Entire nations have militaries that lack decent night vision gear for nighttime fighting, and here in America we give them to children to play with, for the low price of $9.95 plus shipping and handling.

As Yakov Smirnoff, who does not make vodka you damn kids, often says, “What a country!”

Hey, look at that! I found my list of chores from last weekend here on my desk, where it had been previously been buried by junk mail and other effluvia cast off because I didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with them. So as I was “dealing with them,” which means I left them around long enough for the cats to knock over, I rediscovered my list.

And son of a gun, but that’s what I was planning to do this weekend. So I am saving trees by recycling these lists, including tasks, week to week.

See, honey, I am doing it for the environment.

I get the pleas for money from the NRA because, well, I am the NRA, and the ACLU because I subscribe to Harper’s (at least, I did until my current subscription runs out).

I got pleas from them both today, and I swear I am going to write out $10 checks to both of them, and then I will put the checks into the wrong envelopes.

Let them figure it out.

There’s a lot of science in restrooms.

My single reader, and by “single reader” I mean you, Tulsa, the sole bachelor amongst us, listen up! AskMen.com’s got an important story that gives you the signs she’s flrting with you. If only I had seen this earlier.

You see, when I was younger and single, I finally gave up trying to figure out if women were interested in me. Of course, I am a sexy man, as I well know, but I discovered that some women, frequently the ones I was interested in, did not agree. So I never honed my instincts to actually uncover when a woman was actively recognizing my sexy manliness. As I said, I gave up trying. Instead, I told my friends who had a clue to give me a sign if some woman was actually paying me that sort of attention. Scratch your right eyebrow, I said.

So I invited this hot chick I met on the Internet to a poetry open mike in U. City one Sunday night, and a couple of my buddies came along. Not so that I noticed, being I was so into this woman. Next morning, I wondered aloud whether this woman might be interested in little old sexy man me. My cohort Walter says, “Man, you see I don’t have any eyebrow left.”

I guess he was right. She is interested in me.

Bob Rybarcyzk is finding that being a glutton is kinda bad for the physique.

My advice? Work in some wrath, vanity and lust as part of the full exercise regimen.

Or accidentally use the gym attached to the tanning facility you use.

Robert Prather, in the process of a move, has driven through Missouri and has criticized Missouri Department of Transportation’s expenditures on our highways here in the “Show Me the Tax Subsidy Money State.”

Robert said, as a bullet point in his post:

1. Missouri woefully underspends on its highways if I-55 is any indicator; there was a high positive correlation between the remains of blown tires and bumps in the road.

Well, he’s just a passerby, trashing our state’s foolish spending policies. In a comment on his site, I showed him how we residents do it:

Rest assured, Robert, that MoDOT’s right now spending ludicrous amounts of money to put together a five-year plan to road maintenance, just like last year, and its well-paid consultants offer the following advice, again:

• Build more $600 million dollar bridges like the Page Avenue Extension to ferry affluent St. Charles suburban types into their jobs in St. Louis without the hassle of mass transit, which would not only bring them across the Missouri River into St. Louis, but could also bring St. Louis undesirables into the affluent areas;
• Put up more soundproofing barriers so suburbanites who bought houses next to a highway don’t have to deal with the decibel consequences of the low house price;
• Hire more administrators to devise more five-year plans;
• Raise taxes some how, some way.
• Slap a couple inches of asphalt on a couple lanes of highway, which will smooth that stretch until the next day in which the temperature climbs to ninety degrees or drops below thirty degrees.

But did you happen to notice, as you passed through St. Louis, any of the state-of-the-art public/private sports facilities, such as the Kiel Savvis Center, the Trans World Edward Jones Dome, or the site of the soon-to-be-built baseball stadium? If so, the legislators and powers-that-be hope, you would soon forget the obligations of the state government ignored to provide these amenities!

Now that I have been roused from the recliner from what was promising to be a perfectly delicious Saturday afternoon nap to find a child with a pen and fundraising catalog rapping upon my door, I can only wonder

Why are kids fundraising the first week of school?

Can’t our Fagin educators start teaching or something before sending the little Twists out begging?

What sort of mad genius transcribes the complete content from Denis Leary’s No Cure For Cancer album and puts it online?

Who knows, but let it be said that this gentleman, Gerrit, is also a fan of Jewel and Evanescence.

As previous scientific studies on this very blog have shown, Jewel_Fan + Evanescence_Fan = Genius. The Denis_Leary_Fan addition is merely gravy.

As I sat in one of the Signature Medieval Interrogation Collection devices at Gold’s Gym, I was heartened to learn that the intense burning sensation I was feeling was in my tensor fasciae latae.

Cripes, I better hear at least one woman tell me I have sexy tensor fasciae latae.

The Mighty Wisconsin Legislature (and its governor), Took Firm Action against hoteliers who would gig their customers. Wisconsin State Statute 254.83 states:

Every hotelkeeper shall keep posted in a conspicuous place in each sleeping room in his or her hotel, in type not smaller than 12-point, the rates per day for each occupant.

Amid some other conditions.

Of course, hoteliers are happy to oblige by posting rates higher than their actual prices on the doors of the rooms into which you have already checked in. For example, the room at the Milwaukee Hyatt Regency, where I stayed this weekend, cost me $139.00 a night. The rate posted on the door: $300.00 a night. I’ve stayed in a number of hotels and motels in Milwaukee, and the practice is the same. Inflate the rate for the door, and give anyone who actually books the room a great discount.

Even if you factor in the “Welcome to our friendly town/state (sucker) tax rate of 15% on the room, you’re not going to pay the posted rate in Wisconsin, ever. But their state legislators cracked down on someone, sometime, and made a new law that’s easily dodged by everyone in the industry. But taxpayers pay for its enforcement, assuming its enforced, and hotel guests pay for its avoidance. Good work, legislators!

I mean, I would never pay over $300 for a room in Wisconsin unless it included a private indoor swimming pool with waterfall, a sauna, a bidet, and a complimentary bottle of California Sparkling White Wine.

I started a new job today, and as part of the mound of personnel Human Resources department paperwork, I had to fill out an Emergency Notification Form. Just in case something were to happen to me while I am at work. Such as a developer finally snaps under the nihilistic blizzard of defects I am logging and staps me with a black Bic right through the spot where the bones of the skull have knit together. And then, once he or she realizes that ramming a writing instrument into my “brain” has not harmed me, stabs me through the neck.

I tried envisioning the emergency scenario wherein the address of my emergency contact would become relevant….

“Simpson! Something has happened to Noggle! Send out the Died in His Cubicle postcard, and try to get his next of kin to schedule removal sometime this week. Oh, and turn up the air conditioning.”