Like A Ton Of Bricks

Hello World, Well, I don't mind saying that I did not have the world's best week of weather when I was camping, but it sure as heck beats the weather we've been having since I got back, and that is no jive. Two weeks ago, it was 95 degrees for 4 days in a row, and earlier this week, it was in the 50's. Honestly. This is like one of those old Cold War propaganda films where they try to convince us that the Communists are controlling the weather with their futuristic Sputnik satellite. (Which, come to think of it, was probably launched with less technology aboard than the chintziest digital watch of today, that they give away as freebies at tech shows.) Anyway, I can tell you that I'm glad to be at home now, where I can either crank up the A/C, or pile on the blankets, depending on which sort of ridiculous weather the Commies decide to fling upon us at any given moment, spasibo nyet. And for the KGB agents monitoring my email (whose name is Legion, heaven knows) I'd like to state for the record, "I love Mother Russia." Speaking of coming back from vacation, the nice people I work for managed to do their own typing while I was away, which I thought was admirable - but I found out later that they left out all of the other steps in the process, like adding orders to the log, or filing the copies, thanks not. This became flagrantly obvious when I was filing new proposals, and wondered why 11 numbers were simply missing from the sequence where they should have been. I found myself saying out loud, involuntarily (only to myself, since there was no one else in the building at the time) "Oh, bad bad bad! Heck, we have cats better than that!" Also more or less tangentially related to work, I have a new fire bucket that I take camping now, after many decades with my old tried-and-true, beat-up rusty bucket from ancient of days. The new bucket is a better fit for the specialty bonfire logs that I've been using recently, but it doesn't have the same kind of draw as the old one. I decided that what would help would be a couple of half-bricks that I could use to prop up the grate that the log sits on, and bring in more air through the bottom. I already have bricks that I bring with me, so I have a steady base to support the fire bucket off the ground, and not stuck scrounging around for loose rocks once I've gotten to the campsite. In face, I carry mine in the car year-round, for any brick-related emergencies that may crop up along the road. In an interesting aside (well, to me, anyway) when I was making a perambulation around the park one evening, I found an empty campsite where some other nut had apparently brought their own bricks and left about 6 of them behind after they pulled up stakes. and which I have to admit, really made me wonder. (And mind you, I say that as someone who already brings their own bricks camping as it is.) Meanwhile, back at home, the construction company was doing some brick work at a job, so I mentioned that if they came across any cracked or broken bricks that were up for grabs, to please save 2 half-bricks if they could. The owner happily invited me to help myself to the stack of bricks next to the building, but I explained that I already had my own bricks at home, but what I needed was half-bricks. He said if I already had bricks, I could just split them in half myself and be done with it. Oh no, I assured him, that might work with new bricks nowadays, but ours were hand-made by ancient Phoenicians about 2,500 years ago, and literally nothing short of Armageddon is going to split them in half at this point. That reminds me of a fruitless pre-vacation shopping trip to Home Depot, where we were trying to grab some of the specialty bonfire logs for my campfire, but to no avail. Not one to be thwarted, and with time running out, Bill hopped on the Internet and determined to get them directly from our friends at eco forest light 'n go bonfire jumbo logs, or know the reason why. For their part, the eco forest sales brigade seemed genuinely mystified at the whole idea of buying this product directly from them, when anybody could easily pick up all they could possibly want at Home Depot - in fact, they even come with a convenient handle built right in, for this very purpose. Apparently in the Utopian fantasy world of eco forest, big box stores don't run out of products that they're supposed to have on the shelves, and try as he might, Bill was unable to convince them that we had already tried that approach, and found it wanting. In the end, and through sheer dogged persistence, he got them to begrudgingly agree to send us four of the rare treasures, so my vacation could proceed with its campfires happily intact. In spite of the merchant's misgivings, the logs arrived promptly in 2 large cardboard boxes, and I popped them in the trunk of the car so they would be ready to go when the time arrived. It wasn't until I got to the park and was unpacking the boxes for the evening campfire, that I discovered that they had very carefully (one might say, lovingly) surrounded each bonfire log in several layers of bubble wrap before packing them up - as if they were some sort of fragile artistic masterpiece, rather than heavy and sturdy birch logs, which presumably need no one leaping to their defense, I shouldn't think. I thought that was so funny. And while we're on the subject of things that make no sense, alert readers might have noticed the following promotional tidbit on the AOL Welcome screen yesterday: ==================================== Agile LIVE Integrate Agile and DevOps with Version One Accelerate delivery across your value stream ===================================== Excuse me??? Around our house, this is what we chalk up to the horoscope computer, where all of the words are in English, but put all together the way they are, the sentence utterly fails to convey any meaning. What I love about this notice is that you could easily re-arrange the words into any random order, with no increase OR decrease in comprehension along the way. Try this on for size: ===================================== Integrate value across your delivery stream Cross your delivery with accelerated value Deliver value across your agile stream Version One integrates with your DevOps Agile value accelerates your stream version ====================================== Heck, I could do this all day. And the amazing thing to me, considering how much it must have cost to have this 1/4 screen ad at AOL to start with, it still manages to give you not the slightest hint of an idea who Agile LIVE might be, or even what type of product they're pushing, and even less so, the very industry that they're apparently operating out of, for heaven's sake. In the heyday of Madison Avenue's commercial wizards, this kind of obtuse gobbledegook would have gotten its creator a quick one-way ticket back to Palookaville, and a lifetime ban from advertising in any format on the planet. Accelerate delivery across your value stream, indeed. In fact, you may as well just go right ahead and bundle it all up in bubble wrap while you're at it. Elle