ASIMO. The future is now?

I've been following Honda's robot ASIMO since it was first introduced. Although it is an amazing feat of engineering, I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something. Didn't these people see Terminator, The Matrix, iRobot? The list of movies made to warn us that one day computers, and by extension robots, will one day rule our world is extensive.

When ASIMO first came out I thought it was cute. Now it's starting to creep me out... really creep me out.

Live a little... because you never know

I received news this past weekend that business friend of mine had died. He was killed in a work related accident. He was forty eight years old. He left a wife and three daughters behind

Obviously this type news put me in a sour mood but after I thought about the man who died I had a different reaction. This guy loved life and squeezed as much out of it as he could. I can't remember ever seeing him in a bad mood. So Sunday I decided to take the family to the beach and live little. Damn, we had fun too.

How Many Times?

Co-worker : David can you come in here?

Me: What do you need?

I can't open this attachment. It's from FedEx about a package. *click* *click* *click*

We don't use FedEx.

*click* *click* *click*

Um... are you expecting a package?

No.

Did you send a package?

No.

Do you know the person who sent the email?

No.

Why did you try to open it then?

Because it has a tracking number.

Okay then. Is your anti-virus software running?

Yes.

Delete the email and don't open the ones you don't recognize. You should be alright.

*ten minutes later*

David... my computer just shut itself down and now the screen is blue.

*whisper* damn it!

By the time I found the bastard it had sent 238 emails of itself to other people, cloned itself 18 times in her computer and made multiple attempts to infect our entire network. Three different virus detection programs couldn't find it.

I don't know who I'm more irritated with. The employees I keep telling not to open unfamiliar emails or the bastard who made the virus. I pick the employee, at least I can give them the old stink eye.

You know you are having a bad day when...

You call home and have the following conversation...


Me: Hello

The Wife: Hi

Me: Am I suppose to be mad at you?

TW: What?

Me: Are we having a fight at the moment or anything?

TW: Have you been drinking or something?

Me: Well, if one more person pisses me off I might start drinking or go postal, I haven't decided yet. I just picked up the phone to call you and couldn't remember if I was mad at you or not.

TW: Not that I know of.

Me: That's good to know.

TW: I'm your wife, you should know when you're mad at me or not.

Me: I know, that's why I called, I gave YOU the benefit of the doubt.

TW: LOL, bad day huh?

Me: *whisper* yeah.

Say Something

I was sitting in a meeting most of the morning with a customer and a co-worker. After the customer left another co-worker walked into my office. You know the one, it's the co-worker who points out every little pimple and imperfection on your face in front of everybody.

Upfront Co-worker: What's that on your face?

Me: What? Where?

Upfront Co-Worker: You have black grease or something all over your forehead.

Confused I looked over at the co-worker who had been in the meeting with me.

Meeting Co-Worker: Yeah, I've been looking at it all morning. I thought you knew it was there.

Seriously, WTF?! I went and looked in the mirror and sure enough about half my forehead had something black smeared across it. Half! And I have pretty big damn forehead.

"thought I knew it was there" Really?! Did you think I was getting an early jump on preparations for some covert ninja mission? Grrrr!

Impact

In my line of work I get to meet a lot of people. Most come and go without making much impact on my life. But every once in a while you meet a customer that stays with you. At first you don't notice that much. Then you start to appreciate their loyalty. As time passes you get to know them. Then when they show up at you business it's not like dealing with a customer at all.

These people become part of your business. You may ask them to answer the phone if you're stuck on a call or give them a key to your gate because they need to pick something up on the weekend. Sometimes they stop by for no reason at all except to hang out and you don't even notice that they aren't there for business.

I have about five or six customers that fit this category. One of them died this past weekend. It's sad but not unexpected. He had been sick for a few months with cancer and he was in his 70s, I will miss him though. He was very old school, hard working and kind hearted. I was surprised to learn he had done three tours of duty in Vietnam as a tunnel rat. Bits of information like that are what make these customers real people.

A few weeks ago I learned how much of an impact we had on his life. While he laid on his death bed his family began to quarrel over his possessions. They were asking him about his will and wanted to know who would get what. Frustrated he turned to us and asked if we could help manage some of his assets after he passed.

When his sister brought the legal documents she explained how much pride he took in being part of our business. She told us that he often boasted about being able to come behind our counters, having a key to our gate and being able to take any equipment he wanted by just simply telling us he would make arrangements later. I had no idea. I guess we don't always know the impact we have on other peoples lives but it's nice to know we do.

Dropping The Sarcasm

The other day I was talking with a fellow employee and I was a bit put off. She was talking about her husband, how great he was, how smart he was, how caring he was, and stuff like that. You would have thought she was talking about a saint. I know the guy, I like him, but believe me, he ain't no saint. As a matter of fact I have a few issues with some of the choices he's made in his life. Well being my sarcastic self I said " sounds like you've got yourself a little piece of gold there". She didn't seem to pick up on the sarcasm and agreed with me that he was indeed quite the treasure.

Can't she see the the true picture here? Ridiculous! Or is it?... I mean if your own partner doesn't see more value in you than anyone else isn't that a sign of a problem? Of course I had to flip that thought over and check out the other side. Do I feel my spouse is a piece of gold that I should treasure? Of course I do. There is no question about that but do I act that way? The truth, not as much as I should. I tend to concentrate on what I want and the few things I'm not getting rather than the thousand, yes thousands of things she does for me and makes possible for me. Least of which is seeing me as valuable enough to spend the rest of her life with.

So the next time I hear a person bragging about their partner I'm going to say "sounds like you've got yourself a little piece of gold there" but without the sarcasm this time and only hope, that somewhere, the wife is talking about her little treasure even when everybody else knows the truth.

Sometimes I do win

Just like the rest of the business world we are constantly getting bombarded with unwelcome junk faxes. These unwanted faxes cost me time and money as I have to look though them to identify the junk from the important ones. Worse than that, these bastards that send them are using up my ink and paper with out my permission. Fax cartridges are quite expensive.

So a few months ago our fax machine was acting up and I decided to buy a new one. I wasn't all that excited about the purchase because email has all but put an end to the important faxes. However there are times when a fax is required so we must have one, it must be on, and those bastards can still misuse it.

As I was perusing the numerous choices of fax machines I came across the Sharp UX -B80. With this machine you could send faxes and emails for the small price of $99.00. The catch was simple, the ink cartridges were small but each one cost half the price of the machine. I must admit the email option on the machine sold me and even though I knew it would cost me in the long run I bought it.

We ran out of ink the first week. At $50.00 a pop my mistake was front and center. Then I realized if it could send a fax as an email maybe it could receive one as an email as well. I checked, It could! Much to my delight I directed the fax machine to email all received faxes directly to our server. Now we can check the email on the server and view the faxes as they come in. More importantly we only have to print the ones we need on our printer. A huge bonus to our new system is that we can keep each fax on the server and reprint it if needed. Something that has saved us on more than one occasion.

So now we use ZERO ink from the fax, sorry Sharpe UXB80... NOT! We have cut our paper use down by 75% regarding faxes and we never lose one. WE WIN!!!! Finally.

As of today the score stands 1,323 worthless faxes to 263 real ones. Now if I could just do something about junk email...

Boring Follow-up to "Simple? Never"

Just a follow up to Simple? Never. After the employee left on bad terms I received the following emails. People do have their nerves don't they?

Hey David,

I am supposed to be closing on my house at the end of this week. I need a copy of my pay stubs from the last 2 months. Would it be possible to have you email this to me at your earliest convenience I would appreciate it. Thank you

Employee

Another

Thank you David for the paper work, hopefully that is what she needs. I also wanted to quickly ask you about my vacation time. I thought I had been back at the company for over a year. I know M said I have to work to get vacation. That is one reason I didn't come back to work. I may have not always been there but I worked my tail off for your company and I think that I had been there a year then I should be entitled to my vacation pay. let me know what you think, thank you.

Employee

Notice how he didn't bring up vacation until after I had given him the paperwork he needed.

Mr. Employee,

I have avoided talking with you about the way I feel about how you left our company, obviously there would be no point. Since you have decided to ask me about your vacation I will take the time to respond, which is more respect than you gave us when you left. First of all our handbook, that you signed, states

*Vacation* Full time employees will accrue vacation at the rate of 40 hours per year for the first three years of continuous employment. One year is equal to having worked 252 days. Vacation hours will not be issued until 252 days have been worked. A worked day is defined as an employee working more than half a day, is out on a paid holiday or has the sick time or vacation time to cover an absent day. Vacation will accrue at the rate of 80 hours after the employee’s third year of continuous service. An employee must work 252 days each year before any vacation time accrues. Accrued vacation is listed on each employee’s paycheck stub. A SUPERVISOR MUST APPROVE VACATION TIME BEFORE IT MAY BE TAKEN. Earned vacation may be accrued up to a maximum of 80 hours. Employees are compensated for all accrued vacation time, up to the maximum of 80 hours, upon termination from Our Company, Inc. for any reason. Such compensation is based on information from vacation leave records. On December 31, every employee’s leave record is adjusted to show no more than 80 hours accrual.

I checked your records and you missed 24 days of work in the last year. Even if four of those days were paid sick leave you would still be short of the 252 days required to qualify for vacation. If we owed you vacation we would pay you because we have always tried to do what we said but we do not owe you any. As far as not coming back because of something that was said I find that hard to believe. It was obvious on Friday that you had already found a job elsewhere. You seemed to take joy in telling me that you had LIED about being sick the two days before. I know you feel "you worked you tail off for our company" but did you really think we didn't see the time you spent on the phone, the times you disappeared in our service truck and the other stuff?

The 24 days you missed affected our company in a negative way. It honestly came as no surprise that you tried to leave us short handed the way you did. A simple phone call could have saved us the time of having customers sit out by the shop waiting for you to come to work. Somehow I get the feeling that 'sticking it to us' for some imagined slight was your intention. So lets get this straight. You came to us for your job back, you failed a drug test and we took you back and even after all the missed days you still had a job with which to feed your family. You're mad because we wouldn't pay you more but YOU failed to do the one thing we asked you to do and told you was required to get a raise, show up consistently for work.

Despite all of this I do hope you land on your feet and find a good job. You have a family to support and no one here will find any joy in you failing to do that, so good luck to you in the future.

Sincerely,

David

Thank you for a response and thank you for the good wishes. The explanation was good and made sense. Thank you for letting me back to work with your company, not that it will make anything better between you I and your company but I am sorry for the way I left. I wish I had done it different. I never tried to hide from anyone using the phone or leaving in the service truck. Truth be known a lot of the time I was on the phone I would be on the phone with a customer, or the parts house. It got to the point where it was easier to call the parts house and get what I wanted rather then try to explain it to the parts runner but I'm not writing to argue. I just wanted to say thank you for your blessing.

Employee

Of course the other employees where mad at me for helping him with his paper work and being respectful to him in my reply. They all wanted me to answer the employee with the shop foreman's suggestion. It was shorter and fitting but "Fuck You!" just ain't my style, but I did give it some thought, I really did.