God damn I love the 'Internets'.....

While looking up information about training workers I came across across a discussion paper done by a few intelligent bloaks.

Who Gains When Workers Train?

Why do I love the Internets? I kind of found this paper on accident searching for something else. All the links in that search sent me to a place to actually purchase the paper. After typing in the name of the paper in Google I was able to find it in PDF version for free. That is why I love the Internets, free information on any god damn random ass topic you chose to read about. This is a very very long read and I bet most people won't read the whole thing. Understandable, you have to actually work at least a few minutes right?

Office workers who want software they will never use....

To all 4 people who read this blog,

I will send a copy of the software of your choice if you leave a comment giving me a real answer as to why office workers want software they don't need. This seems to be common in the office where a person hears that Gerald The Engineer is using Microsoft Project (for example) and they want a copy too. When they receive the copy they start it up, say oohhhh and ahhhh, then never ever ever use it again. Just because someone has a CD or the installation files for software does not mean they can legally install it on any machine for the hell of it. That would be stealing.

Software is not free.....unless you reply in a comment as to why having software just to have makes sense!

Pandora Free Web Radio

May have already seen this but this is a really great site for free streaming music. If you are tired of what you have at your desk or if you are looking for new artists to listen to who may be similar to someone you type in.

Pandora Internet Radio

Where else would you type in Timbaland and get not only a Timbaland song but tracks from Black Moon, De La Soul, Sadat X, and Camp Lo? Have no idea who those people are? Go to PANDORA and type em in...

Oh ya if you can't stream at work don't blame me, go yell at your IT guy about how the Microsoft Office suite he installed three years ago caused your webpage (not your browser, it's funnier that way believe me) to stream it automatically. He will love it. Might even make his day. Tell him this blog told you that was the problem.

**This is a must read piece** How To: Kiss Corporate Life Goodbye

This is a must read for anyone who is frustrated, tired, suffering from corporate depression, or just need a change...


How to: Kiss Corporate Life Goodbye

Link to great read

The office and fish don't mix like two....

...if you know the end of the line I don't need to say it.

Gonzo Kitchen Odor Eliminator Bag short wmv demo

" All odors are positively charged gases that float in the air like dust particles. The Gonzo Odor Eliminators are all natural, odorless, non-toxic volcanic crystals with millions of surfaces and channels containing a negative charge. The Odor Eliminators act like a magnet does with metal; they attract and hold all odors to keep the air clean and smelling fresh. This is a great item to keep in your kitchen, basement, closet, car, or any other area where odors may linger. "


What does this have to do with a blog that has to do with all things office related?

Nothing...if you don't have someone in the office who thinks everyone enjoys the aroma of a big fat plate of Kim Chi lingering in all corners of the office. Or a gentleman that decides that he needs to get to the microwave before everyone else to cook his leftover fish from last night making your vegetable soup have that deep sea flavor. Come on, everyone has one or two. Maybe it is the curry king in your office? Here is your solution......unless you like to complain about it REALLY loud in a general area so everyone can hear it.

American's kick ass....at wasting time at work!

According to a study done by Salary.com and AOL Find a Job site American's waste up to 2.09 hours a day costing business in this country up to 768 billion this past year. Makes you feel bad for reading this blog right? Maybe the figure would look a bit better if they included how much time employees were forced to waste because of slow co-workers or lack of work? Don't feel too bad though...even if none of those factor in they probably don't pay you enough to do what your job requires.

Here are some stats in case you are wondering....

Top Time-Wasting Activities

1. Surfing Internet (personal use) 44.7%

2. Socializing with co-workers 23.4%

3. Conducting personal business 6.8%

4. Spacing out 3.9%

5. Running errands off-premises 3.1%

Top Excuses for Time-Wasting

1. Don't have enough work to do 33.2%

2. Underpaid for amount of work I do 23.4%

3. Co-workers distract me 14.7%

4. Not enough evening or weekend time 12.0%

5. Other 16.7%

Top Time-Wasting States

1. Missouri 3.2 hrs/day

2. Indiana 2.8 hrs/day

3. Kentucky 2.8 hrs/day

4. Wisconsin 2.8 hrs/day

5. Nevada 2.7 hrs/day

Top Time-Wasting Industries

1. Insurance 2.5 hrs/day

2. Public Sector (Non-Education) 2.4 hrs/day

3. Research & Development 2.3 hrs/day

4. Education 2.2 hrs/day

5. Software & Internet 2.2 hrs/day

Here are some other interesting facts about time-wasted at work:

• Men vs. Women: Men and women waste about the same amount of time per day (approximately 2.1 hours). This, despite the fact that most HR managers surveyed suspected that women waste more time at work than men.

• Youngsters vs. Seniors: As the following statistics show, the older you are, the less time you waste at work.

Year of Birth

1930-1949 0.50 hrs/day

1950-1959 0.68 hrs/day

1960-1969 1.19 hrs/day

1970-1979 1.61 hrs/day

1980-1985 1.95 hrs/day

Link To Article

Im bringing 'bitchin' back to blogging....

And to bring back this 1980s verbage I am putting up a bitchin video game for all to play instead of pounding away at cells inside of Excel...you can thank me later

Free Flash GamesandMyspace Game Codes

Quite a scary read from MSNBC today on Corporations...

Link To Story

"So who really is running the world these days? Answer Desk readers have plenty of opinions. Some, like Marilynn in Baltimore, suspect that Wall Street merger mavens and big corporate interests are gradually usurping government's role in setting up a "New World Order" that will ultimately have the greatest impact on average Americans' lives. For many readers, it's obvious: all you've got to do is "connect the dots.""

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Above is just the introductory paragraph to the article that really got me hooked. Maybe it is a little bit of WOW writing and a little bit of god fucking damnit I hate muthafuckin Monday! Or GFDIHMM like I have on an ultra cool yellow wrist band that shits all over WWJD and testicle cancer awareness bracelets. Now I believe this is border-line conspiracy theory type thinking but very interesting at the same time. Worth reading and wasting time at your boring office job if nothing else!

Keep your Bawls cool with this USB Chiller

No creepy guy, get your mind out of the gutter, look at the spelling of the word before you get excited. Yes same creepy guy with his mind in the gutter, it works for other types of beverages that should be cold.

Link to this cool office gift

The Corporate Boat Race

An American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be. The Japanese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action. Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the American team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering.

The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure. After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing." To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance system for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it.

The next year the Japanese team won by two miles. The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, sold all of the paddles, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.

"How can our politicians call trade 'free' when year after year we sustain runaway trade deficits and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs?" Is that pro-worker, left-wing moviemaker Michael Moore speaking? Hardly. Try Lou Dobbs, host of the Lou Dobbs Tonight show on CNN and self-proclaimed "lifelong Republican" on the soapbox against the whole notion of free trade. The issue of American corporations moving overseas in pursuit of cheap labor has become a rallying cry for the otherwise conservative business journalist, and through his national TV show, he has become a lightning rod of controversy for speaking out against it, having been called everything from a protectionist to a communist. True, the book's publication coincides with a hot presidential race, yet Dobbs doesn't see either side as having the answer (Clinton, after all, signed NAFTA into law). Instead, after deftly laying out the problems, Dobbs thankfully offers sound ideas for reversing the course that he thinks will lead to losing another 14 million jobs to outsourcing. A tightly written account of an important economic issue.

Mary Frances WilkensCopyright ©

American Library Association. All rights reserved

Here is the Amazon.com link

Amazon.com reviews are usually on point and this seems to have recieved some favorable reviews. Looks like a good read to me.

Need a new look for your cube?

Here are a few posters that I would like to post up in my office. The first one being my favorite of course. Follow the link below to find others that may suit you or the people around you much better

Link to site!

I'm gonna get you youtube'd today cuz it's Friday and you ain't got shit to do!

Collection of the best clips from Office Space one of many inspirations for all of us!

Best Buy to help keep worker bees buzzing?

Source - CNN Money

"With a classic flextime structure, workers arrange their schedules with their boss in advance. But under a program called Rowe, for "results-only work environment," the boss has no say in scheduling and can judge employees only on tasks successfully completed - even if none were done in the office. The five-year-old plan now covers 60 percent of the employees at Best Buy's corporate headquarters near Minneapolis.

And by all accounts, it's working. Employee productivity has increased an average of 35 percent in departments covered by the program."

"The company says turnover costs - recruiting, training, and loss of operational time - are $102,000 per blue shirt, or about 250 percent of their salary."
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Really random Microsoft worker? I suggest a life in politics post-MS career

Source - EWeek

"I have been here [in Redmond] all day long, and I have seen very few escalations come through from our field. But it is early, so we may see more tomorrow and the next day. But today we have not been flooded with requests for information and guidance or help," M3 Sweatt, the chief of staff for the Windows Core Operating System Development Group, told eWEEK.

But, that being said, Microsoft was already working closely with its enterprise customers to ensure they had what they needed.

"Some of them are happy, some of them are not. But we are working with them as best we can to make sure we are addressing their issues," he said.

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Few problems here...

1) The guy is named M3 Sweatt? That sounds like a posting name on some BMW forum, not something you would see on a birth certificate. Let's hope that one is a typo.

2) Maybe no one was escalated to your department because you don't field complaints? The problem wasn't with the patch itself as much as it was the amount of patches and the fact you guys waited less then a month before the DST to release a patch. As if the US government waited until Feb. 10th, 2007 to make the decision. Also, I highly doubt that every user that had this issue was going to call Microsoft. Why bother? They have IT to yell at that kind of stuff for. Or a tech savvy relative. Even if every IT prof in the country called Microsoft it wouldn't be a fraction of the REAL AMOUNT of people mad about this. Personally if I had to call you for every complaint I personally recieved from another user I would have dialed over 175 times on my own. That is just for users on the westcoast I spoke with. Many people echo what was being said by other people in that interview about calendar issues.

3) Or better yet it wasn't escalated to you because IT corporate worker bees like myself figured out that patches were applied but machines did not have 'automatically adjust for daylight savings time' checked? Pretty sure that could be turned on by the patch somewhere for those who did not have it checked.

4) Maybe no one was in the chat because they have given up on Internet Explorer and use Firefox, a browser that Microsoft does not support on any of their sites. Sorry but I rather not use Microsoft web sites then have to close Firefox to launch Internet Explorer 6 or 7.

Stupid IT Question Of The Day

Names have been changed or edited. Yes..this is a real engineer with a REAL degree....


******Mr. Corporate Worker Bee checks voice mail**********

Engineer: Hi Mr. Corporate Worker Bee, this is *****...I see video on the online training course but I do not have any sound can you please give me a call back.

******Mr. Corporate Worker Bee dials office*********

Mr. Corporate Worker Bee: Hi engineer this is Mr. Corporate Worker Bee.

Engineer: Hi Mr. Corporate Worker Bee, I see the video come on but there is no sound. Does this have sound?

Mr. Corporate Worker Bee: Yes the video has sound. Do you have speakers?

Engineer: *in very confused tone* I need speakers to get sound?


That is it for this installment of 'Stupid IT question of the day" be sure to check in again for yet another awesome IT adventure with yours truly.

Man that is a wicked hawiian shirt!

Who doesn't like to be tossed a bone right? I know there are people out there who LOVE buy one get one free deals from various companies. Shit, I love when the Improv hooks me up with 4 free tickets as long as each ticket holder buys two drinks at 10 a pop! We feel like we are getting something special so in turn it makes us feel special. In my opinion, the top bone thrown to us corporate worker bees is good ol 'Casual Friday' or as I like to call it Crappy Hawiian Shirt Day. Forget Cake Day or the summer picnic. Two cheers for Crappy Hawiian Shirt Day!! Does this fall under the 'we are getting something special so we in turn feel special' category? I think it does! Nothing says thanks for working until 11 every night this week while ignoring your children or loved ones more then the ability to trade in your solid blue button up shirt for a button up shirt that has slot machines and cherries.

Let's not forget how important this day is in corporate America. In fact, this day is so important in corporate America that 'Casual Friday' is actually mentioned as part of the recruitment/hiring process. To the genius in a suit who thought of this day to boost morale in place of higher wages, better benefits, and a better working environment, I salute you!! Thank you. My buddies and I will smash our Corner Bakery cups together at lunch in a toast just for you!

Cake Day!!!!

Cake and an office go hand in hand. Cake is now a staple of your diet thanks to your fellow co-workers. Every few weeks an excuse comes up to eat cake. Stephanie's son finally learned how to wipe his own ass at the prime age of 6. Blanche go pick up a cake for 3:00 break!! Summer starts in 2 and a half weeks? Muhfucka where is the carrot cake at? Now there is nothing wrong with cake itself. Cake is good from time to time. Sometimes you need that sugar rush to be able to finish up the spreadsheet you've been working in all day. So you ask, where is the real problem? The problem is the women in the office who constantly complain about gaining weight because of treats brought into the office while at the same time shoving icing and chocolate mousse down their throat. Shame on you aging 60 year old woman who so badly wants to be 25 again, put down the cake and quit bitching!

Office work?

SIGH...that is all.

Cartoon of the day