New Fad in SF - Ghostriding

What is ghost riding? It is getting on top of your car when it is moving and doing a dance from the hyphy culture. You have to see it to believe it...



Thanks again to Matt for this post!

Never Tick Off Sci-Fi / Fantasy Writers

"Bruce walked around any more. Some people might ought to her practiced eye, at her. I am so silky and braid shoulders. At sixty-six, men with a few feet away from their languid gazes."

Will you publish a book that reads like this? Apparently, this script was submitted to PublishAmerica which promptly sent a letter that "This book deserves a chance" and sent the contract to the writers for publishing.

The title of the book, Atlanta Nights was the work of 30 sci-fi and fantasy writers who took action after PublishAmerica made derogatory remarks about them. It all started when sci-fi writers criticised PublishAmerica for being a vanity press, or a publishing house that will publish anything for a fee, leaving the author to do their own marketing. Their books were printed as and when the order came with no refund policy, which means very little of their books out of their 11,000 titles were sold.

PublishAmerica returned their criticism by calling them "literary parasites" who "looted, leeched or plagiarized their way to local stardom." Incited, the writers hatched a plot to intentionally come up with a really bad book, and submitted it to PublishAmerica through a friend unknown to the industry.

The style in the book swung from hard-boiled detective to women's sexy shopping novels. The style changes from chapter to chapter, and which characters were in which chapter was determined by rolling dice.

Chapter 21 was left blank because one writer missed deadline. Another chapter was included twice. MacDonald, the compiler for the book, took portions of two other chapters, ran them through a software program that randomly reordered the words, then accepted all the spell check and grammar fixes his software recommended.

The result is Chapter 34, nine pages of disconnected gibberish that begins: "Bruce walked around any more. Some people might ought to her practiced eye, at her. I am so silky and braid shoulders. At sixty-six, men with a few feet away from their languid gazes."

After the manuscript was submitted, PublishAmerica sent the contract over, which the writers promptly posted up on the internet, together with a copy of the book. PublishAmerica caught on to the hoax, and promptly resent them a letter that the book needed more work, but the word was already out.

So moral of the story? Never tick off sci-fi / fantasy writers. With their creativity and imagination, you never know what they can think up to get back at you.

READ AN EXCERPT

Chapter 9

Penelope Urbain let out the clutch as she sped around the curve. She felt a thrill — partly from the roaring engine, from the speed of the car (she was moving fast, too fast, on a suburban street, and she liked the speed too much). Partly, no, mostly — mostly it was the thrill of anticipation. She was going to meet Bruce Lucent, and she was eager to see him.

She could not have said why she wanted him so badly, but she did. Wanted to see him! That was all it was, she was curious, more than curious. Eager, but — not too eager.

There. That was his home. That was where she meant to be.

She hit the brakes hard, skidded to a stop in front of his house.

He was in the doorway, waiting for her.

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Company Prima Donnas

Working in an MNC has its fair share of challenges. Due to the size of the company, many challenges are understandable, and even expected. However, nothing prepares you for the company Prima Donna that you meet. I have met my fair share of Prima Donnas, but the one in my department is one mind boggling sample.

What's a company Prima Donna? They are the people who love being in the limelight, think they are better than everybody else, insist their own way, claim credit for what others have done and bully them into doing work for them, while refusing to contribute to any other projects that do not raise their profile in the company. They are self centred political creatures who are out to "dazzle" higher management with self promotion while unabashedly bullying others into doing work for them and insisting they agree that she's the best thing that happened to the company. Any of these sound familiar?

Well, part of my duties in my business unit is collating business review reports from the various countries, getting respective sector managers to look at the country reports, compile them into sector reports and send them over to me. I'll collate them for the Asia Pacific region and send them over the headquarters as the business review report for AP.

It was quite a challenge to get our country managers and sector managers to keep to their deadlines at first. They are already bogged down with too much work and administration, reports and presentations. However, they soon learned that I would hound them, call them, bug them and stalk them until they got it done and that it was easier for them to comply to the deadline than to try to run away from it. After a few months, people were actually all keeping to their deadlines and we have never been late in submitting our report to our headquarters after the first couple of months. My boss was pleased, and things were going well.

When I say all, I mean all but one, none other than our department prima donna. She simply ignored all my reminders of the deadline, and for the first 2 reports, I actually completed her sector report for her. The first time I rationalised that she was unfamiliar with the format (as were all of us) and was busy with a launch. The second time, she was on business travel so I gave her another chance. Third time around, I wised up to the fact that she did not even care about the report and simply expected me to complete it for her.

I put my foot down, reported it to my boss, and got her consensus that meeting the deadline was the priority, and that missing information would have to be provided after the initial submission. I communicated to the department Prima Donna that if she did not meet her deadline, I would have to submit AP's business review without her sector report, and copied my boss and our group operations manager on the same email. She promptly completed her report within the same evening and sent it over.

After that incident, she was on time for all her business reports until this month. Plans for her "top" programs were falling through (due to her lack of leadership to the country launching the program, and due to insufficient business development of the program). Initially scheduled to be launched in Aug 2006, It was postponed to Oct 2006, and now again to Feb/Mar of 2007. She had little to show for her sales volume. Somehow, she had managed to get herself involved in another high level project in AP, and management in the States were impressed at the number of high level projects she was taking on, without realising the sad state of those programs in AP. Heady with the power of having top management's approval, she reverted to her bullish tactics and once again to ignoring my requests for her to complete her report on time.

I gave her a deadline, reminding her in a text message that my priority was submitting AP's report on time, and if she should fail to submit it by noon today, I would have to submit the report without her sector report. She replied promptly with a single word, "cool". I couldn't believe this was the attitude of a high level executive in a company that placed importance on integrity and fostering respect for your colleagues and peers. I was stunned. We are talking about a woman in her mid thirties who is married with a son, has an international career, and worked in global FMCG companies...

Since that was her decision, it was not my place to do her job for her and I still had a job to do. I had to inform my boss that I would be submitting the region's report to our headquarters without the commercial sector report, and conveyed my communication with the sector manager to her. After I had cooled down a little, I decided that the text message warranted a response. I picked up my phone and sent her a text that I had made note of her decision, and informed her that I had informed my boss of her decision as the report was a representation of AP's performance to our head company. There was no reply until an hour later when I received a reply that she had sent her report to me.

I am immensely baffled by her actions, and trying to understand her is a mind boggling affair. She is mean to the people who try to assist her in the projects (taking all their ideas and then kicking them out of the project claiming they are trying to steal her credit, and then working their ideas into her proposal and claiming it as her work!) and is treating her new hire badly. He had wanted to report for work in January this year to have a short break between jobs, but she had insisted he report for work at our company immediately as she wanted him around. And then she went ahead and took leave for December so that when he reported for work, she was not around! So he practically spent his 2 weeks in an empty office (everyone was on holiday leave) and trying to do what he could to get himself orientated by speaking to whomever else was around.

A global colleague whom I'm close to told me that our head office is very impressed with her because of the presentations she has sent over to them, and how she has "marketed" them. Apparently, she is expected to get a grade "1" review which is for outstanding performance. Something which is even more difficult to understand. There is even speculation that her counterpart in our head office may be leaving, and she is pushing hard for his job. It would be a promotion for her. Personally, I would be glad for her promotion. Not that I'm rooting for injustice, but at least I'll have peace of mind or as the saying goes, to have "plucked the thorn from out of my flesh..."

Bizzare Cause for Traffic Jam

One of the most frustrating / stressing times is when you're in a cab, caught in a bad traffic jam. Those are the times when I consider living in a busy city a big pain, especially when the meter jumps like a mad kangaroo all the way to Mars...

However, there are certain events that living in a city keeps us away from, like this bizzare cause of a traffic jam seen in South Africa:

iPhone - The Ultimate Digital Device

Its finally here!! The much awaited iPhone, thought by many to be a mere rumor, is finally released by Apple in an announcement. Not to disappoint, the iPhone is a combination of a cell phone, iPod and Blackberry device all in one! It plays music, widescreen movies, surfs the net, checks yur email, yada yada yada.

Read all about it

Watch the Announcement on CNBC.



While consumers are waiting in anticipation, the ringtone industry have much to worry about. As the iPhone is an iPod, any song can be used as a ringtone and any photo uploaded to the iPhone can also be used as wallpapers. No more downloading of ringtones and wallpapers from sites of service providers as you can get them from your personal archives of iTunes and photos.

While the ringtone industry won't die overnight, it will definitely shrink as iPhone is the foreleader of future mobiles to come for the next 3-5 years. This will of course depend on the price of the phone that comes with or without contracts with mobile service providers...

International Safety Week & Global Security

Sound like big words, and we went through them early this morning from 9.30 am to 12 pm. While other business units preferred to spread their training out over 1 hour periods daily to cover the week (hence the International Safety WEEK), our business unit decided to squeeze all topics into 1 morning.

While we had some interesting talks and videos on safety, the most interesting talk was on Global Security. They are the ones who send us Travel Advisories on when it is unsafe to travel to a particular country due to terrorist threats, natural disasters, or security breaches. What was impressive to learn was that their services are also available to us when we are traveling on vacation. There is a hotline to call should we ever find ourselves in a bind, at all times, 24 hours a day. This leads to a stray thought - Have you ever watched "The Terminal"? Maybe if Tom Hanks were working for our company he would not have found himself stuck at the NY International airport for 9 months...

As Global Security also include investigations into duplicates (counterband production of our products by unauthorized dealers / companies), theft, fraud, etc., what was an interesting piece of information for us was that one of the bigwigs in our Global Security team was a former top personnel of the FBI... Suddenly, I felt so much better and safer as an employee of our company...

Cat Massage for Lucky Dog

If only the underdog were as lucky as this lazy dog...

The Art of Pencil Sculpture

The Best Unkown Mac Applications

If you own an Apple computer and would like to be able to do more cool stuff on it, these mac applications by Dustin Bachrach will put you on the road to enhancing fun and functionality on your mac.

Best Unknown Mac applications - Page 1
Best Unknown Mac applications - Page 2

Unbelievable POS System

A man walked into a gaming shop to buy some Magic cards worth $10.80. He paid for it via his credit card, not aware that the store was a new branch and didn't have a POS system set up yet. He saw the cashier typing his information into a computer and when he had finished and turned the computer over for him to check his information, he was shocked to find that the clerk had been entering his personal credit information through AOL to another store branch to check if his credit card was good and for registration of sale. To top it off, he was given a handwritten receipt for his purchase.

Read all about it.

Grungy Manhattan Building

Buildings on Manhattan's 188 Suffolk Street underwent power washing. The before and after picture shows how sooty the air is in New York.