20 June, 2008

Long e-mail signatures

Does this look familiar?

"Dear best regards,

Regarding your last email, bla bla-bla bla-bla-bla blabla-bla blabla bla bla-blabla.

Best/ warm/ thanks and/ regards, blablablah.
(for originality, the regards are replaced with 'Have a fantastic weekend' on Fridays or 'Have a great week' on Mondays)

Firstname Lastname

$Department
$Title (sometimes this title can get as long as 3 lines)

$Corp (for the best visual impact, a 500 kB picture may be placed here)
$Corp address (all 3 of them)
$ReallyIntelligentCompanySlogan
$ReallyIntelligentCompanySlogan, continued
$ReallyIntelligentCompanySlogan (really intelligent slogans are really long, aren't they?)

Phone: 0099asdfsd
Fax: 009988zxczx
Cell: 00764jknf
email: firstname.lastname@$Corp.com
Secondary phone: 043dfsdcfsdf
Another Fax (for sales): 0908deskfd
Other phone: 034dfdfsfsdf
Skype ID: smart-and-funny-name-sometimes-including-the-Corpname
Windows Live ID: way-smarter-and-funnier-name-sometimes-including-the-Corpname
YahooID
TwatterID

Disclaimer: $Corp cannot be sued for the content of this email, no matter how stupid the content may be. If you received this email by accident, you must delete it and forget you ever received it. And, probably, we won't sue.

This email has been scanned with $Super-Ultra-Safe-Antivirus-and-Spam. However, if you get infected we cannot be sued (see above).

Please think of the environment before printing this email."
Indeed, you have to think twice before clicking the 'Print' button. It'll take paper from four trees for those signature and disclaimer.

You really need to write your email in your signature; where else can I find it, should I need to reply?
Well, if I cannot find your email address, it's great you gave me a list of all your 35 phone numbers, 15 faxes and 8 cell numberss. Of course, each of those 35 numbers is a robot with call waiting where I give up after 40 minutes of "music" and a seizure-inducing voice asking me to press # to hear about your latest products. And you don't have signal on any of those 8 cells.
I could send a fax or write you a letter, but I cannot decide which is more fun. And which of those 3 addresses is yours? If I send a letter to the main location, can I Cc the other two offices?

But wait, that's when the IM information comes in handy.
And that's when your corporate firewall comes in handy.

Come to think of it, you're quite unreachable these days. Good thing your cubicle is right next to mine.

If I promise not to print your email in order to save the trees, do you promiss to think twice and not waste bandwidth before clicking 'Send'?

18 June, 2008

Come to think of IT

I've been working in IT for almost years. More than a job, it's a passion. After such a long time dedicated to the same passion, you either get really bored or addicted. Until you get bored...

Every day you hear the Google founders are making n hundreds of thousands while they're scratching, that YourSpace or Arsebook is now buying $NewMarvelWebStartup for x million dollars, that Apple are making billions with the new iCloth and so on.
One of the jobs I had in IT happened at $Megacorp, where I was support monkey for $ExpensiveSoftware that $Megacorp bought from $Bigcorp for almost 6 billion dollars (they bought the whole $Bigcorp for this money). 6 billion is a lot of money...

A few weeks ago I read in a news Mars bought Wrigley for 23 billion. It's almost 4 times more than $ExpensiveSoftware. For chewing gum. Bought by candy. Come to think of it, it kinda puts things in perspective.

We end up thinking the things you're most fond of are the most important. Well, sometimes they are.
But most of the times they're not.
The dot-com bubble doesn't stand a chance against bubble gum.

09 June, 2008

episode 4m: hmmm...

So you came back for more... You don't really care about those trees, do you?

beta

I chose a dark theme because it will save 3 Watts (compared to a not-so-dark theme). Not reading this at all may add considerably more Watts saved, so think of the large number of trees saved should 100 million people not read this each month.
One of those trees may be the one that doesn't make any sound when it falls.


Real content coming soon...