Rage in the Diebold Machine

Fortune Article "Rage in the Machine"

Why we never have to worry about job security while producing quality software.

Here's a five-step plan guaranteed to make an obscure company absolutely notorious.

First get into a business you don't understand, selling to customers who barely understand it either. Then roll out your product without adequate testing. Don't hire enough skilled people. When people notice problems, deny, obfuscate and ignore. Finally, blame your critics when it all blows up in your face.

Are flip-flops damaging your career?

I don't usually read or link to Reuters, but this story was so appropos (I just saw Dan) that I couldn't pass it up:

Style gurus warn that flip-flops, which are worn mainly by younger women, could be harmful to a career.

"Shoes convey the mood of a woman. Wearing flip-flops conveys the mood that you are relaxed and on vacation. That's not a good message in the office," said Meghan Cleary, a style commentator who wrote the book "The Perfect Fit: What Your Shoes Say About You."

Since when was feeling relaxed and on vacation not a good message in the office? Apparently, the writer didn't consult any studies on the correlation of companies' restrictive footwear policies and absenteeism... Come to Asynchrony, where every day is like a vacation!

Agile RSS feeds

I've put together a page with headlines from a wide variety of rss feeds on the topic of Agile development. You can find it here.

Vader Of The Opera

Darth and Luke battle and belt it out in this musical.

Movie Cast Helper

From Lori...

MyHeritage.com does facial recognition on photos to find celebrity matches.

Personally, I don't like it. It says Pam looks like Erica Durance, while I look like Kim Jong Il. Not nice.

A True Employee Incentive

World's first beer health spa opens in Czech
London, Mar 28: A family brewery in the Czech Republic has opened the world’s first beer health centre in its cellar. The Chodovar Family brewery in Chodova Plana offers beer baths, beer massages and beer cosmetics.

The cellar has seven huge Victorian style baths where visitors can swim in beer while enjoying a pint poured at a bathside bar.

"Beer can treat a range of conditions, particularly skin conditions, and the health centre should appeal to men who are put off by 'posh' traditional spas. I have heard of some places in other countries where people can swim in beer but it's just a gimmick. We believe in the healing properties of beer and we offer the full range of treatments. We are a fully-fledged beer spa," Ananova quoted Jiri Plevka, the owner as saying.

The guests are charged 80 pounds for weekend packages, and can indulge in a range of health treatments including beer wraps, starting at 12 pounds per session.

You Got Game? You Know Jack?

Hey, Sports Fans! If you KNOW sports, put yourself to the test here.
faniq.com

Par for the OC?

The last Sunday evening when Pam and I were in Huntington Beach for Boeing, we travelled down to Laguna Beach to see the sunset, eat dinner and witness the hotness of the OC.

This picture I took that day deserves a 'Priceless' award! No plates or registration AND illegally parked. The officer writing the ticket said, "He can afford this!"

Company library: It begins

Need a five-minute break this beautiful Friday afternoon? No, I don’t need to bum a smoke or play ping pong – I’m talking about a diversion that has a more, er, direct benefit to the company. ;)

I’ve been thinking about a way in which we can leverage our employees’ collective book collection (is that redundant redundant?) so that we can know what books we have at our disposal. So I invite you to help me try LibraryThing, an online book-cataloging site. It’s free and easy, and I’ve registered an asynchrony user for us all to share. It uses the concept of tagging, which you may be familiar with from sites like Flickr or del.icio.us.

1. Go to http://www.librarything.com.
2. Sign in using asynchrony/asynchrony.
3. Click the Add books tab.
4. Add as many of your books as you like, tagging liberally.

Some examples of tags might be the book owner (or, since many of our books are technically company-owned, book “possessor”) – I suggest using aCe login name – location or topics. Check out the list of books already in our catalog to see what I mean.

If you have any questions or ideas, please let me know. Thanks!

-Matt

Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career

Are you ADD? Yes? Great!

Now you don't need to spend money on drugs to treat the problem, go into High Tech and MAKE MONEY from your SKILLS!

Of course, we need testers too. Know any OCD people?

And, if you're ADD and OCD (like me), it could be a BFD!

Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career

I guess it's fitting that Blogger locked up and I tried to repost this without checking. haha... chuckle chuckle

Which language to use?

This guy did an essay on 'C++ vs Java vs Python vs Ruby : a first impression'.
http://www.dmh2000.com/cjpr/

What no comparison to some wonderful Micro$oft language? (ha, no)

Maybe we're on the wrong track...

Found out about this conference via Brian Button's blog; I have to admit, some of the arguments are pretty compelling. We've been doing Agile for a couple of years now...maybe it's time to step back and re-evaluate.

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

I think I'm going to have to attend, anyone care to join me? We can all get tickets to Tim Lister's keynote: "Dead Fish Can't Swim But They Can Float Down a Waterfall."

Save the date: April 1, 2006!

Keep the press free

If the left's regulatory war against free speech moves onto the soil of blogs, what would happen to our little company blog, anyway?

URL o' the day

Chuck Norris Facts. Read them.

Robots Go To War

Here is an article from Popular Science which talks about robotic initiatives like FCS.
Article

As the Robo-Gaffo will someday say, "Oh Snap! (brrt, bing) It's on!"