The iPhone is interesting, but all along it’s been touted as the only phone that would do [this].  In fact, it is not the only phone that will do [that] and in most cases, other phones do it better.  It might look a bit sexier thana lot of others, but really, no cut and paste?  No 3G (on the first iteration)?  I have no idea what else it doesn’t do because I have no interest in having one.

Anyway, what strikes me so funny is that so many people want an iPhone just because it’s an iPhone, or because Apple makes it.  They don’t care that it won’t do this, that, or the other thing that’s so important – they just want an iPhone, dammit!

This sums it up to perfection.  I laughed until my belly hurt.  No, I don’t have an iPhone, and until it will wipe my ass for me, I don’t want one.

I get that, and I’m guilty of it all.  However, the one thing I am not guilty of is personal phone calls in my cube.  I don’t make them from here, and the most I will do is answer them while sitting at my desk.  There is always an empty office or conference room nearby.  Why do you feel the need to discuss the boil on your spouse’s ass with your best friend where we can all hear about it?  Not only do I not care, but the fact that you are being extremely loud makes it unbearable.  And then when I laugh or comment about it, you get all huffy like I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.  Get over yourself already.

One guy last year had to change his health insurance.  He was a private contractor, and he was changing employment, and had to get something changed.  OK, I get that.  But I don’t want to listen to it, especially for an hour or so.  Yep, this guy went on and on for nearly an hour getting his new insurance set up.  He was discussing all the pre-existing ailments his children had, the boil on his wife’s ass (or something similar), and his erectile dysfunction – all where everyone could hear him.  And he wasn’t being quiet about it, either.  It was more like, “Listen to all the ailments we have to deal with!  I’m getting new insurance!  I’m changing employment!”

When someone actually started laughing (loudly) and made a comment, the guy on the phone became infuriated and started yelling at the other dude about minding his own business.  Then at least 10 of us had to get involved because we could all hear every word the guy on the phone said.  In fact I repeated to him (verbatim) the ailments he listed on the phone to the insurance person.

You could have knocked him over with a feather.  He truly couldn’t believe that we could all hear every word he said.  For someone who considered himself really smart (just ask him!) he really wasn’t very.

So, word to the wise.  If you don’t want everyone around you knowing what you’re up to, and don’t want them commenting on your so-called “private” conversations, take your phone calls elsewhere.  There’s usually a phone in the conference room, and your cell phone will work just about anywhere.  Get off your ass and keep your conversations to yourself.  Not only do you not want to share them, I’m trying to get some work done!

Why, oh why, oh WHY can’t people who come to this country to work learn to take a SHOWER?  It’s summertime, people.  It’s hot outside, and sometimes even inside.  That means that if you’re not going to wear deodorant, you’re not going to smell very pleasant.  Please take a shower daily – or at the very least change your underwear (but that’s a completely different post). 

There’s this one lady who sits in a cube near me.  You can’t walk past her area without gagging.  This is on a daily basis, and it never ceases to amaze me.  Does she ever take a fucking shower?  Apparently not.  At least it’s “just” body odor, and not an overpowering smell of ass or something, but Jesus help me, one day I’m going to go ballistic and vomit or something.  I’m not talking about someone who runs during lunch (besides, we have a locker room; she could take a shower if she did, like the rest of us who run at lunch sometimes).

What’s worse is that some guy has to sit right next to her.  I mean close enough to touch her.  I don’t know how he can stand it!

People, you know who you are – take a fucking shower already, OK?  The other cube dwellers will thank you for it.

Why is it, that although you’re a grown-up now and you no longer get Spring Break or Summer Vacation, you still need one at the end of May?  Is it because it’s so imprinted on us when we’re children, or because if we have children of our own, we can’t resist the temptation to take the time off? 

Or is it just because we hate our fucking work and we need a break from the idiocy?

Yeah, I’m going with that one.

What is it with these people?  Even though they’ve got you doing five different applications for them - all of which are far more complicated than they need to be because whoever did your job before you didn’t see fit to tell the customer that despite their limited knowledge of SQL Server, they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about and trust me, you want a developer or DBA to design your database (not YOU) – they want you to drop what you’re doing and do something else.

Then when something gets “lost” or put on the back burner because it’s unimportant “today”, they get pissed off and call your supervisor ranting about how bad the customer service is.  Really?  Try being your own customer, you insolent fuck.

Personally there is no greater pleasure than telling them that they will have to wait.  “Last week you told me we had a June 30 drop dead date on program XYZ, and now you want me to stop working on that and work on PDQ?  Sorry, I can’t do that; XYZ is statutorily mandated and it absolutely has to be done.  Your PDQ will have to wait.”  I don’t even send them to my supervisor (who is mostly useless, but that’s a whole different blog post).

I know there are people like this in the world everywhere.  Arrogant assholes who think the world revolves around them.  When you have to deal with them, laugh and think, WWJD (What would Jack [Bauer] Do?).

Yes, in honor of the “24″ season series finale, it’s Jack week here in my cube.  Don’t like it?  Fuck you.

Why, oh WHY does the bitch in our office who does that have to come bother the same person, who sits near me, every.  Fucking.  DAY???

Day in and day out it’s “You should do this” (talking about how to be more green).  “I feed my dog frozen vegetables!”  “You should bring reusable plates and utensils to work to use.”  And then, there’s the laugh.  That cackle that not only makes your skin crawl, but makes you truly want to beat the living shit out of the bitch.  God!  Shut the fuck up already!

Does your office have a person like this?  Yeah, I thought so.  Next time you overhear them (and let’s face it, that’s pretty easy to do), just imagine yourself walking over, and giving them the Jack Bauer treatment: imagine they’ve swallowed a SIM chip and you need to get it out of them. 

While that would certainly shut them up permanently (and if you’re sane you won’t do it), perhaps you can just giggle next time you have to listen to the incessant, annoying bullshit that is frothing forth from their mouth.

Speaking of meetings, if I had another dollar an hour for every meeting I wasted my time in each week, I’d be making twice as much money as I do now.  That’s mathematically impossible, I know, but you get the point.  These people have meetings to set up meetings.  It boggles the mind.  As a peon, I was required to attend a meeting between supervisors and upper management about why another contractor was no longer working on his contract (um, it had expired?).  The guy had been picked up by another department within the same agency, so he was still holding a cube there, but the originating department wanted to know why he was no longer working on “their stuff”.  I certainly understand them wanting to have an answer to that question, but that developer was not me.  Why the hell was I there?

We also have meetings to talk about .Net 2.0 development and using AJAX.  Personally, I learned AJAX at home, on my own time, because, well, it was cool stuff.  It wasn’t anything new per se, but it was certainly a new and much easier way to do a lot of the things we were doing with JavaScript.  At any rate, AJAX has been around for – what? – two years?  They are having meetings on learning about .Net and AJAX.  I’m all for learning more, but let’s face it, if they are already two years behind, they aren’t going to catch up by learning Visual Studio 2005.  They may as well start learning VS 2008, right?  Duh.  In these meetings, they sit and discuss when they are next going to meet so they can set some policy for something that’s already outdated.  UGH.

Another meeting that I’m “required” to attend is the bi-monthly IT manager’s meeting.  I am not an IT manager, nor do I aspire to be one at this particular place.  I don’t go to the meetings.

State agencies wonder why software is not delivered on time.  At least part of the problem is meetings.  I would say about 5% of the meetings I attend are either useful or productive.  The other 95% are a complete waste of time.

Oh, and TGIF.