Streets of seals

Cute alert: 

HuffPost reports a New Zealand woman found a baby seal in her house, and has pix of the pinniped to prove it.

What I want to know, however, is what is that blue metal mechanical thing on the sofa with it?

Workplace notes

This came to me via a "humor" list at work.

I was pretty sure it didn't originate within the corporation (it didn't), as it bespeaks an attention to detail in the written word as opposed to the transmitted one.

If it had been me, I'd have objected to the surfeit of exclamation points.

Order in the court

As another indicator that the court system is as much about idiocy as justice, here’s the story of a convicted kidnapper suing his hostage victims for breach of contract. Jesse Dimmick is claiming that Jared and Lindsay Rowley broke their promise to hide him as he was fleeing police.

The alleged promise was made while Dimmick was holding a gun, and he’s seeking damages of $235,000.

Plus legal fees, I’m betting.

Dimmick, BTW, is serving an 11-year sentence for that particular incident, so there’s no legal doubt that he was committing a felony at gunpoint at the time of his eliciting the purported oral agreement.

File it under “America, gonif!”

Healthy it ain't

The business unit at the company where I formerly worked, which had been described to me as “like a really well-funded start-up” at my interview, has closed down, and most of the people I worked with have been laid off.

The corporation has essentially decided to get out of the healthcare systems business. They’re in the process of offloading the remainder of their enterprise clinical systems into a joint venture with an established healthcare systems firm (one that has figured out how to make money in this arena); the consumer side had been left to atrophy about 18 months ago.

I don’t have any figures, but it’s my sense that the BU didn’t make any money in the five or so years of its existence. And after a while someone in corporate finance is going to notice that.

The thing that got me about the consumer unit (where I was a very bad fit) was that they’d commit to building applications based not on market research but on vague “strategic” partnerships committed to by the BU senior management (now “retired”) or because someone glib had a flea in his/her ear and convinced someone else it would be cool. The prevailing approach was, “let’s build it and; figure out how to make money later.”

Their foundational consumer product, a personal healthcare record (PHR) platform, has never made money. And when even Google backs out of that market, you know there’s probably not a way to make money out of it.

Anyway, that’s not what I want to consider today. It’s how the BU handled the internal announcement. And by “handled” I mean “bungled”. A colleague and erstwhile office mate told me what happened.

On Wednesday the entire group was called to a meeting. People knew something was up because there’d been a lot of new people in for repeated meetings with closed conference room blinds. So they figured there would be some announcement.

However, at the last minute, a subset of the group got meeting updates directing them to a conference room in a different building. These were the “saved”. My colleague, BW, was in the latter group, but he didn’t get the update, so he showed up at the “damned” meeting, with his coffee and laptop.

An HR rep called him out of the gathering for a word—and would he collect his gear? Outside the room, she asked if he’d not got an update? Because this meeting was being “repurposed”. She sent him back to his office, where he waited, wondering what was going on.

Fifteen minutes later, the “damned” having been informed that Friday would be their last day, she was back to walk him over to the “saved” meeting. But by that time that one, too, was over.

It’s not at all on the same scale, but while BW was describing the events of Wednesday, I was reminded of the selection process at Auschwitz: whether you were directed “rechts” or “links” determined whether you lived (for a while) or died.

I know that it was the BU HR that set this up, because corporate HR runs things like Prussian Uhlans. I also know that both those in the saved and the damned groups were stunned by it all, especially the timing. As one of the latter said on her Facebook page: "Merry fucking Christmas".

As for me, I’m feeling…well, not schadenfreude, but perhaps relief, and a validation of my decision to leave that job when I did. Had I not walked away I’d have had 18 months more of wondering what the hell I was supposed to be doing, and that’s just not for me.

And there I’d be, laid off, in Seattle, having to figure things out in a very bad place.

(BTW: if anyone ever describes a company to you as "like a really well-funded start-up", run.)

Rat race & human race

Two stories from NPR today that are worth thinking about:

Researchers have discovered that a freed lab rat is concerned about a fellow rodent caught in a trap. So much so that the former will labor hard to get its cage mate out of the trap.

And here’s the thing—given the choice of two traps, one with a pal and the other with a cache of highly-prized chocolate, the free rat will still liberate its mate, as well as the chocs…and then share the treat.

Meanwhile, back in the human cage, Republican pols are still decrying the “millionaire” tax as a terrible burden on business owners’ ability to create jobs. Only an NPR reporter was unable to get any of the decriers to cough up someone to support their claim.

She did, however, get several business owners who said that the tax does not figure large in their plans to hire staff. And when approached by the reporter with this contradiction to his mantra of not taxing business, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) tush-tushed her, “Those I would say were exceptions to the rule.”

And back to standing tall against any measure that would help out the American people, or even the majority of his constituents.

I suppose the argument could be made that the ’Pubs are in fact looking after their cage mates, but only the ones who have already shared the treats with them.

But even so, I think this time the score is Lab Rats: 1; Human Beings: 0.

Surgical strike Pt Last (I hope)

Last Friday I had my follow-up appointment with Arrogant Jerk, MD, the surgeon who performed the arthroscopy on my knees.

Keeping in mind that this sports medicine practice is like the assembly line at Ford, and that all my interactions with everyone there (except with the MRI tech) has had all the warmth and humanity of installing an engine block, I was a little surprised to find that they had no record of the appointment that had been on the schedule for weeks.

But, rather than lose the fee from my insurance, they let me in and left me in the sports hell examination room. (Truly I say unto you: there was nothing to read in that room except Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine and the sports section from that day’s Mercury-News.) And they left me there to wait for 25 minutes to fit me in between the transmission and the drive train.

AJ, MD’s assistant didn’t have my chart—she commented on that as she scribbled down notes what was operated on, meds, etc. When AJMD finally came in, he did have a folder in hand; I wondered if he picked up someone else’s chart on the way in, just to make it look good, as a prop.

His greeting was, “No hugs or kisses today—I’m sick.”

Euw.

He took a cursory look at my knees and basically cut me loose—if there are no issues I don’t have to see him again. And I’m not planning on having issues. Because every time I see this guy (except when I’m sedated) he creeps me out.

So, I continue with the exercises my physical therapist gave me and wait to make sure all the bills clear my insurance.

Serpents of the season

Well, I was being sardonic when I referred to the holiday season and then directed your attention to the recent stories about cobras in the tax office and the windshield viper (sorry, couldn’t help myself)—the water moccasin that appeared on the windscreen of a family’s car as they were going at speed on a highway.

But it turns out there really are ophidian aspects of the holidays this year: at least two families (one in Idaho and the other in North Carolina) have hit the wires because their Christmas tree ornaments included…a snake.

I see a trend developing.

Pearl Harbor 70 years on

Today marks the 70^th anniversary of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It might be appropriate to pause in your holiday activities and think of the thousands men and women at Ground Zero in 1941, as well as the millions who took on the fight against fascism.

In this past year the final known living soldiers of World War I died, and the survivors of Pearl Harbor are also dying off. The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association holds its last gathering today; then it will disband. Its members are too old and frail to travel to meeting places.

These days we know what it’s like to wake up one beautiful, clear day and discover your world crashing down without warning. For our generation it was buildings collapsing, not battleships sinking.

The Pearl Harbor generation has carried these memories for 70 years. I hope many were able to transmit them—to families or historians—so that they are not lost to the future.

Bonfire of the vanities

No doubt you’ve heard the news of what’s being called the costliest car crash ever: a 14-vehicle crash on a highway in Japan. It involved varying degrees of destruction of eight Ferraris, three Benzes and a Lamborghini.

Evidently there was this convoy of high-end cars headed to a meeting of sports car enthusiasts in Hiroshima when the driver of one of the Ferraris tried to change lanes. He crashed into the median barrier and spun out across the highway. No human fatalities, but a lot of damaged egos, and I’m guessing some car insurance execs are not looking forward to a happy year end.

I like the way the spokesman for the traffic police referred to the drivers, aged 37 to 60: “A gathering of narcissists.” I’m betting that they are also all male.

Evidently there were also a couple of Toyotas in the mash-up. Probably collateral damage.

Sunnyvale sites & sights Part 1

I like walking around my Sunnyvale neighborhood. Within a mile or so of my place there are Latino, Indian, Korean and other ethnic markets, seriously low-rent trailer parks and even a few remnants of the orchards that used to be here before it was Silicon Central.

The area is strictly lower- and middle-class cheek-by-jowl, although many of the unremarkable 50s to 70s ranch houses fetch well over $700K. (Apparently we're in the Cupertino school district, which adds substantial kick to your property value.)

The houses are largely cookie-cutter, but I find that the front yards are indeed individual.

I was walking past one such when I realized there was quite the lawn ornament:

And if you'll look closely at the plant on the left, you'll see that there is more to the defensive system than just the knight:

All plastic, of course--this is the Silicon Valley.

But I'd certainly like to meet the owners.