Comments on: Hard, cheap wisdom http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038 Instant wisdom about any random thing I feel like. Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:53:56 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: J http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-29213 J Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:21:55 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-29213 just wanted to let you know, if you search for nerf nerve gas in google, this is the first hit :P just wanted to let you know, if you search for nerf nerve gas in google, this is the first hit :P

]]> By: $mike cremer http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-22527 $mike cremer Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:57:31 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-22527 As Mr. Curry says, "When they publish the Employee Handbook, it's time to leave." As Mr. Curry says, “When they publish the Employee Handbook, it’s time to leave.”

]]> By: landon http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-22192 landon Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:15:46 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-22192 @DomAng: "...object factories that power superbowl sock puppets." Wow. I imagine it would be tough to get more than (say) two or three startups-deep, whiteboard-history-wise. But I would sure avoid an inherited whiteboard if it had the "S" word anywhere on it. At Wayfarer, we just bought big (4x8) and very cheap ($10) sheets of whiteboard-like material from Home Depot and screwed 'em to the wall. Seemed to last long enough (say, a year), though I did have a cow-orker who would scribble on mine with an indelible marker. Booger-wise, you find the most *amazing* things in people's desks after a layoff. I'm just sayin'. @DomAng: “…object factories that power superbowl sock puppets.”

Wow.

I imagine it would be tough to get more than (say) two or three startups-deep, whiteboard-history-wise. But I would sure avoid an inherited whiteboard if it had the “S” word anywhere on it.

At Wayfarer, we just bought big (4×8) and very cheap ($10) sheets of whiteboard-like material from Home Depot and screwed ‘em to the wall. Seemed to last long enough (say, a year), though I did have a cow-orker who would scribble on mine with an indelible marker.

Booger-wise, you find the most *amazing* things in people’s desks after a layoff. I’m just sayin’.

]]> By: DomAng http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-22188 DomAng Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:08:50 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-22188 Landon's wisdom about fumigating cube furniture before taking delivery is sooth. Yes, your furniture can have critters. Or worse… I hire on. I get shown my new cubicle. Freshly installed desks and rolling cabinet. So I crouch down underneath to wire up my network and PC. While under the desk (this cubicle desk was the kind that's just a slab held to the cube wall by metal L brackets) I look up. To my disgust the underside was covered with ... boogers. I kid you not. Pure 100% Yuck. After waiting two hours for someone to get me some new furniture I borrowed a screwdriver from someone and removed it myself and placed it in the hall booger side out so everyone could share in the gross out. Startup worker beware. A pattern I’ve seen at companies is to give you a cube full of crappy rotten furniture consisting of wobbly tin file cabinets, a particle board slab desk with a side that's swelling from an old smelly liquid spill that got into the seam, a white board hazed with marker marks that won’t rub out, a coat hanging hook that’s supposed to integrate with the top edge of the cube wall but just detaches and hits the floor when you try to hang anything on it, and …. a that brand new $700 Aeron chair. Has anyone made a study of those old white boards with hazed drawings and words that won't completely rub out? The words and diagrams burned in after the previous users at some other company abandoned them? I bet some percentage are covered in faded words like 'synergy' and 'make it up in volume' while another percentage are covered in old engineering diagrams exploring possible ways to build XML generating makefiles which produce object factories that power superbowl sock puppets. Landon’s wisdom about fumigating cube furniture before taking delivery is sooth. Yes, your furniture can have critters. Or worse…
I hire on. I get shown my new cubicle. Freshly installed desks and rolling cabinet. So I crouch down underneath to wire up my network and PC. While under the desk (this cubicle desk was the kind that’s just a slab held to the cube wall by metal L brackets) I look up. To my disgust the underside was covered with … boogers. I kid you not. Pure 100% Yuck.
After waiting two hours for someone to get me some new furniture I borrowed a screwdriver from someone and removed it myself and placed it in the hall booger side out so everyone could share in the gross out. Startup worker beware.

A pattern I’ve seen at companies is to give you a cube full of crappy rotten furniture consisting of wobbly tin file cabinets, a particle board slab desk with a side that’s swelling from an old smelly liquid spill that got into the seam, a white board hazed with marker marks that won’t rub out, a coat hanging hook that’s supposed to integrate with the top edge of the cube wall but just detaches and hits the floor when you try to hang anything on it, and …. a that brand new $700 Aeron chair.

Has anyone made a study of those old white boards with hazed drawings and words that won’t completely rub out? The words and diagrams burned in after the previous users at some other company abandoned them? I bet some percentage are covered in faded words like ’synergy’ and ‘make it up in volume’ while another percentage are covered in old engineering diagrams exploring possible ways to build XML generating makefiles which produce object factories that power superbowl sock puppets.

]]> By: DGentry http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-21919 DGentry Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:58:17 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-21919 About the salescritter calling up to ask for a feature: yeah, I've been there. It happened a few years ago. It really astonished me when I finally figured out that the call hadn't at all been to try to make good on the commitment he'd made to the customer: the sale was already made, and he'd string them along long enough for the commission check to go through. The call was just to have someone to blame when the whole deal went south. About the salescritter calling up to ask for a feature: yeah, I’ve been there. It happened a few years ago. It really astonished me when I finally figured out that the call hadn’t at all been to try to make good on the commitment he’d made to the customer: the sale was already made, and he’d string them along long enough for the commission check to go through. The call was just to have someone to blame when the whole deal went south.

]]> By: landon http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-21730 landon Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:14:44 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-21730 @bjh: Anyone who's been on the receiving end knows that a fully loaded bean burrito is NOT a toy. Always point a burrito in a safe direction. Never assume that a burrito is unloaded. Never point a burrito at something that you wouldn't want to destroy. The "unloaded" burrito you have just been handed is loaded until you confirm otherwise. @bjh: Anyone who’s been on the receiving end knows that a fully loaded bean burrito is NOT a toy.

Always point a burrito in a safe direction. Never assume that a burrito is unloaded. Never point a burrito at something that you wouldn’t want to destroy. The “unloaded” burrito you have just been handed is loaded until you confirm otherwise.

]]> By: bjh http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-21715 bjh Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:19:32 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-21715 > One more “soft toy” attack on my cubical and I’m swear to God I’m going to whip out the Nerf Nerve Gas. That would be... bean & onion burritos? :-P > One more “soft toy” attack on my cubical and I’m swear to God I’m going to whip out the Nerf Nerve Gas.

That would be… bean & onion burritos? :-P

]]> By: Mike Peter Reed http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-21455 Mike Peter Reed Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:50:39 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-21455 Krone blocks, I remember them ... I still have the punch tool somewhere too ... Krone blocks, I remember them … I still have the punch tool somewhere too …

]]> By: Sellam Ismail http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-21448 Sellam Ismail Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:04:14 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-21448 Corollalry to the punch-down wisdom: don't assme the telco lineman got his end of the install right. Ever since the telco downsizing in the early 1990s, everyone working for the phone company ever since has been a douchebag who doesn't understand the importance of observing polarity. Corollalry to the punch-down wisdom: don’t assme the telco lineman got his end of the install right. Ever since the telco downsizing in the early 1990s, everyone working for the phone company ever since has been a douchebag who doesn’t understand the importance of observing polarity.

]]> By: landon http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038&cpage=1#comment-21437 landon Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:36:28 +0000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1038#comment-21437 One of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_block Basically, when you get phone lines from the phone company the physical pairs terminate in a closet or phone room. You get access to that room from your landlord. The pairs from the phone company are on one side of the block, your internal wiring is on the other. You use a punch-down tool to connect the outside numbers to your phone wiring, however you want. These days you probably just use IP telephony or something. Pretty much every tenant on the floor / in the building has their lines coming into that closet. It's a scary place, security-wise. One of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_block

Basically, when you get phone lines from the phone company the physical pairs terminate in a closet or phone room. You get access to that room from your landlord. The pairs from the phone company are on one side of the block, your internal wiring is on the other. You use a punch-down tool to connect the outside numbers to your phone wiring, however you want.

These days you probably just use IP telephony or something.

Pretty much every tenant on the floor / in the building has their lines coming into that closet. It’s a scary place, security-wise.

]]>