They always come at night. Or during the day.

They come with critical issues, or at least that's how they see them. It's your fault. It's not them, it's you. You've got to fix it. Now! ASAP!

You have to. Because they're always right.
And by the time you alt-tabbed to something more interesting, they've already escalated.

You may think it's all bad, but it's not. If you're the support monkey, you get a bit intimidated in the first days. Maybe some tears at night, too, for the faint of heart. Before too long, though, you get used to it; the yelling, the phones, the meetings, it's all white noise. Say yes no matter what customers and managers ask to keep the conversation short, ask for logs, tell them to do stuff to pass the time and keep them busy, provide solutions, say yes again and alt-tab to something more interesting; case closed. Don't get too involved, learn to play games discreetly at meetings, remember to take your sexual harassment and corporate conduct training, and life can be sweet.

If you happen to run the monkey cage, however, you struck gold. Outrageous pay, stock options, huge benefits. You don't even have to take the sexual harassment trainings, and if you're high enough on the ladder you may even get caught and get away with it. Jackpot!

Here's an easy recipe to make a successful support center:

1. Come up with a product that businesses need and adopt (not that easy).
2. Don't mess it up for a few years (not that hard).
3. As soon as it bakes to enough mass adoption, quickly take it off the oven and swap it with the support center (easy and cheap; many developers cost more than fewer support monkeys).
4. When the support center has risen nicely, quickly cut it in thinner and thinner slices and replace/add a new one in the ASAP APAC region (piss easy and even cheaper; support monkeys in the US or EMEA are expensive; those in APAC, not that expensive).
5. You're almost done. Remember to sprinkle new versions on your products every few months to keep it fresh, because nothing keeps customers and monkeys busy more than upgrades (optional but recommended).

That's all there is to it: a successful support center in 5 easy steps. To spice it up a little, you may throw smaller companies in to the mix every once in a while. You may buy now and align them to your company's strategy (and charge support for those, too) or compete with them in 5 years.
Serve chilled, on a yacht.

Twitter. I don't have one.

Hello, I am pretty russian girl, bored tonight... What?... No, this is not why I wrote. Would you be interested in a Swiss watch? Can't afford it? It's cheap. Still can't afford it? Contact my uncle in Nigeria, he will help you. And maybe he'll have sex with you, too.

When even nasty girls that send you spam don't want to have sex with you and you can't even afford a fake Breitling, maybe you spend too much time on twitter.

OMG, it's the acronyms!

Sometimes rappers use spelling to showcase their skills: criminal record (P.I.M.P), bad spelling (D.o.double-gee) or, for lack of imagination, their name (M.e.t.h.o.d.). Sometimes it's funny and sounds cool, but sometimes it's just retarded (yeah, pimp, I mean you).

Sometimes IT people use spelling to showcase their skills as well. It's not as stupid (yeah, pimp, you again) or as funny as in rap music, but sometimes it can help you stand out. Of course, a geek uses only the acronyms, without the embellishing epithets; he's not a ho-pimping-CCNP or an RHCE that's done time, yo. This additional info would make resumes stand out, but probably not in the desired direction. HR is not MTV. Alth... no, nevermind.

The problem is that, just like in rap music, acronyms do not quite reflect reality all the time; they may be the only interesting bullets in your resume and land you on the job. Or you may not have them on the resume, although you have the skills, and don't get the job. In the latter case it only affects you, in the former it can affect others.
A guy I used to work with once interviewed for a DBA position. For the "technical evaluation" this lady pulled a book and started asking him SQL questions. She asked, he answered, she checked his answers in the book and then asked again. Things were going great, until one answer was not like in the book, and things didn't go so great after that. His answer was correct but it wasn't "like it says here". A classic wtf moment. Any attempts to explain were in vain, so he tried to get the best of this, as him getting the job was already out of the question at this moment. He took the book from the table, and said "OK, I will ask you some questions now, just to see how well you actually know SQL". A few embarrassing moments later, the interview was over.
Most likely the job went to the first candidate that had read the book (or to the CEO's nephew).

Reading books pays off, after all.

Tall blue guys and a not-so-tall green guy

People are getting suicidal after watching Avatar. A good thing, you might say, it's called natural selection. (Or as the Germans put it, Die hippie!)
If we sit down and think of it for a while is a big if, because thinking is so rare these days. But assuming we do, a few things come to mind.

Life in Pandora would be nice for a while, as she was created by Zeus as a beautiful, attractive woman. However, in the long run, you may hear from Epimetheus or get a nasty box that Wikipedia calls a jar.
Back to the movie, Pandora is not really such a great place after all. There are some glow-in-the-dark flowers, some beautiful trees but there's also a lot of nasty animals and other dangers. The Amazon forest looks nice on Discovery, but try living there for a while; there's no electricity, internet, if any, would be outrageously expensive, it's hot, it's moist, there are tons of insects, snakes and other predators. And, worst of all, there are megacorps cleaning it all up, because wood is, you know... profitable. Admittedly, you don't have floating mountains and flying dragons, but it's okay if you have vertigo.

It's not all bad, though: the hairy USB port that seems to be compatible across all species is a great thing and would make many things much easier: we wouldn't need to whip the horses, we could find our way in the forest, Lassie would save the day earlier and I wouldn't be ripped off by paying a fortune to Nokia for their incompatible discontinued chargers. So yes, a truly universal port, that's what I'd like to have. No more German or French lessons, no more fifteen adapters, 8 remotes and no more Sony Memory Sticks.

And assuming Pandora actually existed it's almost certain humans would ruin it the minute they set foot there. Remember what happened not so many hundreds of years ago, when the Indians from the tribe of the Native Americans and the Caucasian white man met in the land of the free (unless you were a slave)? One minute they were roaming the land, riding their mustangs, hand in hoof with the buffalo, the next minute it's all moonshine and casinos. The nice Pandorans would turn into Native Aliens, stop walking around naked and go to pick cotton faster than you can say Leonard Peltier. People kill themselves because they can't go to Pandora, but guess who'd storm to the drug cabinet if they did.

If we go there, a suitable character to invade this beautiful alien world would be the new Universal Soldier. He's not really suitable at all, but I mentioned a midget in the title, so there you go. Of course I didn't see the movie, that would be worse than Denzel Washington as the bad guy, saving the Bible.

Intelligent evolution

In the beginning was the word. And God turned it into an amoeba. The amoeba agreed and said "Word". Then it grew up and turned directly into human, as frogs and monkeys have nothing to do with it. Dinosaurs are also ruled out, since they cannot fit the garden of Eden. Man -let's call him Adam- then had a woman and a bit later the snake had her too and gave her an apple -probably an iPod shuffle- to shut her up. And probably some STDs, but this is still open for debate (yes, only that, because all other stuff is so well established, verified and beyond any doubt).
As we all know, once you get an iPod you have instant great personality so she gave Adam a bite and left him with an ugly scar. Then they had make-up sex and had one son. And then they had two, and then only one again. As there were no other women, the son had sex with his mother and had a lot of sons and daughters. And so the world began.

While this theory of massive inbreeding may explain why we have politicians and lawyers, it leaves pretty much everything else uncovered. On the other hand, evolution is more reasonable, because I want my offspring to be Optimus Prime with Wolverine claws and Chuck Norris facts.

And bald, just to piss him off.
I'm going to be a great dad.