Displaying 511 To 540 Of 1,384 Comments The eyes are ‘sposed to move… they did the other day… 🙁 » Posted By PocketWatch On February 14, 2011 @ 1:50 pm Last I heard, Coinyer was saying he wanted to stay until everyone else was gone, so he could be King. Gotta admire his lazy-assed methodology to reach a goal… LOL 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 14, 2011 @ 1:27 pm Is THAT it? I was assuming large cans of Bullshit Repellent. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 14, 2011 @ 12:26 pm Thanks! I was feeling a little playful… 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 14, 2011 @ 12:26 pm Try the word ‘roll’ between :—: 🙄 » Posted By PocketWatch On February 14, 2011 @ 11:28 am Welcome! Donuts are over there ➡ 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 14, 2011 @ 11:17 am LOL I always told my daughter when she was “that age” and starting to use the bad words, to try and think of ways to be creative in her cursing, in order to set herself apart. I am more of the type of guy that will tell someone they are stupid in six different ways, and they never knew I did it. Back in my corporate days, I was considered the master of the “NastyGram.” 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 8:59 pm Thread tracking… » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 8:53 pm Hey, cyrano! Holler for someone to send you a link to get you up to speed. They set up an article for newcomers with all the stuff you need to know. FAQs at the top of the page is a good place as well. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 8:52 pm The AOL thingy works the same way, although, as I remember, you can set a preference not to do that. It’s been a while… You should try role-playing… I spent many months in a place called The Red Dragon Inn, and in that place, you had to be a character, and interact with everyone else’s character…. no mundanes allowed. FOCUS! 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 8:14 pm Cher, Some nights in a chatroom with 30 people going at it and having 6 different conversations at once, it requires intense focus to keep up! I had fun! 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 8:03 pm You mean the Pinto of the blogosphere? 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 7:15 pm Actually, if they were real smart, they have an auto answer function… 8 or 10 classes of complaints/emails, and a stock answer for each. Glean the email adress from the complaint, select the appropriate classification, and ZIP! Form letter! I’m surprised they aren’t doing that, but maybe they are. It is possible to sort of ‘humanize’ that sort of software, making each reponse different but saying the same stuff. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:36 pm Prolly one tomorrow sometime…. I have a feeling that it will be a series in 245 parts… LOL Just kidding, but there’s a long way to go.. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:31 pm Maybe Stephanie should just open every email with… “Hello, my name is Peggy…” in a foreign accent… Would be about the same, at this point in the game. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:28 pm My one-man crusade in business is to spread the message, one company at a time, that IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY! If anyone reads my posts on business carefully, it should be obvious I’m headed in that exact direction…. human and humane businesses where everyone thrives, from the janitor to the owner. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:25 pm (I play the kazoo…) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:21 pm I would prefer to think that the Stephanie’s of the world are not happy in their plight, but if the second scenario is true, I see that as much, much worse because it is so cynical. I have consulted with companies that were becoming like that, laughing at customers behind their backs, making fun of customer complaints, etc., then crying to me about how the company wasn’t doing well… Those were tough. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:16 pm There is a very specific reason I write about small and medium sized businesses. It’s because they are still able to be human. That is not to say that most small businesses can’t take away from the corporate world some of the advantages of being organized to the level they need to be. As soon as a company either goes public or takes on investors that are only interested in quarterly returns, it all becomes about the numbers. At that point, staff meetings are driven by how to meet the quarterly profit goals, not about how to improve the product, retain employees, set up working relationships with vendors and customers, or anything else. All that is put aside. Make it cheaper, faster, toss aside anything that impedes making that net, and do it again for the next quarter. Loyalty to the product or customer is mouthed, but is totally secondary the minute someone gets ascared of having the major investors come in and be pissed because you didn’t hit your numbers, and they had BETTER be positive in every quarter. No lattitude for volatility in your market share, no understanding that growing slow will result in a more solid company. Nope! Add that to having major investors or new partners injecting their people into a well-run company to ‘keep an eye on things.’ Not so much. They are there to make sure that their real bosses’ money is being protected and grown. Period. It is a bleak picture, my friends, and I’ve seen it over and over, from the inside. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:10 pm This is what corporatism does to people… Think about Stephanie for a moment… Probably took that job thinking that she was working for an organization that means something, and is now stuck sending snotty, meaningless replies to people with real issues. Not that I have sympathy, but that bait and switch has GOT to be galling among some of the staff over there. Of course, maybe it’s just a job, and no one cares. Maybe they pass around emails like this over lunch and laugh. Would anyone here like to work every day in an environment like that? I spent (survived) 10 years in a multinational corporation in NYC. I earned my business chops there, but it was a happy day when I gave them a 2 weeks notice. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 5:52 pm I just had this thought as Maggie the Cat is bugging me for another ‘walkies’…. My cat deals with facts (ref: SQUIRREL!!!!!) but not logic. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 2:06 pm I think of that often myself. In the book, the limitations of a Fair Witness is discussed as well. Heinlein was many things, but he was not a hypocrit, as far as I could ever tell. » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 1:51 pm In his book “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Robert Heinlein (a rabid Libertarian, from what I could ever glean, not that it matters to me, really)incorporated into the story the concept of a “Fair Witness.” A Fair Witness was a trained professional witness for hire who had an eidetic memory, and whose credentials or testimony could not be questioned. In one scene, a character asks a Fair Witness in a professional capacity “What color is that house on the hill over there?” She replies “It’s white on this side.” The idea was that she would never assume anything, but would only report fact, as far as she could witness it, when asked anything as a professional. All our lives, we make an assumption that facts are simply that… facts. Unassailable. But recently, we have had that assumption shaken by a deluge of people that look at anything and come up with their own ‘facts.’ Some of those new ‘facts’ may even be correct in the sense that the house is ‘white on this side.’ But there is no context, no larger question, and stringing a set of ‘facts’ that are unrelated to one another to come out with a pre-determined conclusion for selfish or political purposes is becoming more and more prevalent. It is difficult to argue when confronted by this phenomenon. After all, facts are facts, right? All else is opinion. I have my set of facts, you have yours, and even if they are ALL facts in the strict sense of the word, relevence is ignored in many cases. It is headache-making. I propose that logic (a slippery tool in itself), experience (a subjective tool), and intuition (an even more ephemeral tool) are all essential tools to apply to any set of facts to come away with an opinion that frames our arguments. It is a fool’s game to simply state facts and say they are an argument. The media these days is claiming to be a “Fair Witness” by supposedly stating facts and leaving argument and opinion to the consumer of those facts. Then, when walking away from the disaster they instigated, claim they are being neither left or right, as if that is a principled position. But they are leaving out half the equation. Facts must be accompanied by experience, logic, and intuition or they mean little or nothing, frame nothing, expose nothing. I said in another post in a different section that I can be correctly accused of speaking out of my butt because I am not ‘on the inside’ in many of the situations that are so important to society and do not have the inside skinny. That applies to most of us in most situations. So how do we become so sure of ourselves and our positions? We use ALL the tools we have, not just some. All I ask of the Fourth Estate is that they, once again, do the same, instead of claiming to be the Fair Witnesses they are not. » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 1:39 pm A Short List of Pres. Obama’s Accomplishments Innnnput! Need innnnput! I hear ya! 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 3:57 pm LOL I think you are your own cult! (checking for the lightning bolts…) 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 3:52 pm BTW, if you want to decompress, see the panel on the rightof the screen, and go to “Everything from ‘Over there’ belongs Over Here”… It’s a place to discuss recent experiences in all things HP. 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 3:49 pm Kelly, so glad you escaped from behind the Huffington Curtain. Smell the roses! 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 3:47 pm KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad ta see ya! 8) » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 3:36 pm I say I’m a Socialist, but that’s for effect more than anything else, and to differentiate myself from languid Progressives and Liberals who really don’t know enough about economics, history, and the sweep of public opinion that oscillates back and forth over time. I personally thnk that capitalism is fine, as long as it is balanced by the principles of the Commons I suggested above. Balance… The Constitution calls for political checks and balances, but the only thing I know that balances an economy is a mix of capitalism (to provide incentives to ‘progress’) and socialism (to protect the Commons from capitalism). Of course, politics is tightly entwined with economics, since each society “decides” how that mix is enacted and used. » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 4:15 pm A couple of quick points… In any rational economics class, what is taught is “mixed economies,” that is, a bit of capitalism, a touch of socialism, and some raw libertarianism thrown in for spice. Any time one thing overtakes the other, bad things happen. Also, many mistake socialism for a political position (it has been used as such many times in the past) when, in reality, it is primarily an economic philosophy. Since economics cannot operate without a political component (same thing with capitalism), the two are often confused. My take on socialism, or at least my brand of it, says that the commons we all depend on cannot be left to for-profit entities. That is a dangerous road. Government control of necessary things for survival is at least nominally accountable. Private ownership and management of public commons’ are accountable to no one in the end, just a Balance Sheet, of which there is no ability to take to court, or even argue with. Anything not a part of the commons should be left to regulated capitalism, with the regulations more stringent the more a business starts to affect larger and larger elements of society. In that context, that sort of socialism could work in a monarchy, a democracy, a theocracy, or any other sort of government. We see the world out of two lenses… one is political, and one is financial/economic, and because of our binary vision, the two are always mixed together and combined. It is difficult to unravel one from the other, but we must. » Posted By PocketWatch On February 13, 2011 @ 6:44 amComments Posted By PocketWatch
Coffee’s hot
Conversation is stimulating
People are friendly
And the troll-repellant is still working
As an old AOL chatroom veteran, I have to say that was actually mild.
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