On Notice

Site

Here’s a new feature of the site. To be honest, I haven’t had a chance to catch Steven Colbert at all on account of we don’t have cable but it seems the on notice phenomenon is ramping up or down (not sure if I’m behind the curve or not on this one). So if you’re on this list consider yourself notified.

An Interesting Correspondence

Adventures

You may enjoy this exchange with a customer from a few years back. I’ve changed the names to protect the guilty:

Dear Joe,

I reviewed your Sarbanes Oxley compliance document and noticed a few things that are worthy of mention:

1. The security section requires that sensitive information be encrypted in transit but most users do not have encryption tools available.

2. The security section mentioned that a user is not allowed to disable his virus scanner, yet this is permitted on most or all workstations.

3. The security section requires that if possible a session must time out after 30 minutes, but none of the windows workstations times out. This is something that could be centrally controlled.

Yours Truly,

AP

And the response:

Thanks for your feedback. I’ll forward your email to Sue and Francine and add it to my file.

Joe

Profane Personage (No. 2)

Adventures

Today, I sit across the light brown cubicle wall from yet another proverbial profane personage. Yes, I said I would sit next to him again and here I am. I shall label this one a subspecies since his habits are different from my former profane office mate. This man spits vituperation and vulgar slang in a tone that ranges from ill-tempered to hateful.

He just picked up the telephone so I shall narrate. Now he asks “What the f___?” Now calls his customer’s mother a bitch. Now he calls for God’s damnation on some thing or other. Now he slams the receiver down. Well, at least he is unhappy about that conversation.

[Sigh]

Recent Radio Ads

Observations

People! Check out this awesomely bad radio advertisement that keeps playing on the radio:

“People, has your career gotten nasty? You know!

Boring Job. Lousy pay! And then there’s your boss! What’s his problem? Isn’t it time to get some opportunity back in your life. Imagine, you and a high paying computer job.

Every day, thousands of computer jobs go unfilled. Check it out, according to salary.com microsoft certified network administrators make between $40,000 and $75,000 with only a few years of experience. That’s a lot of cheese people!

That’s why you gotta come to the PC productivity career revival. Keep your day job, get trained at night. Just 6 months and you’ll have a plan b for a new career. You’re done! Finito! On to the good life.

We’re also giving away an x-box 360 and servin’ pizza so just call 1-866-xxx-xxxx or register at pc productivity schools .com.”

I sure wish I had the audio but I’m too lazy for that. I do, however, have the audio for this “wear your seat belt or else” ad from the USDOT, which is almost as awesomely bad.

Click it or Ticket!

MG comments on the USDOT ad:

“‘blah blah blah’ NICE. Looks like the US Dept of Transportation is looking to get some street cred by speaking the language of the “non-buckler” by referencing what apparently they think goes through the minds of non-bucklers when they don’t buckle up. Something tells me they missed the mark on that one.

Yeah, that seemed like your standard gov’t attempt to sound hip in a psa-style setting–complete with cheesy dialogue delivered by a booming monotone voice, yielding just the right balance of awkwardness and all-around starchiness.

Thanks for that….loved the music too, btw–that blend of trance/techno meets 80’s jock rock guitar. Although the guitar soloing I think didn’t soar quite high enough.”