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Bob The Builder Gets A Personality Transplant
McCarrum writes "Here at 'undisclosed company,' there's been a push to bring a mascot into our IT team. After much discussion and many excellent ideas, the PHB made the executive decision on Bob the Builder. Enter one Bob the Builder talking doll. Talking?! By Crom, that means a chipset! (cue evil laugh) A quick bit of exploratory surgery and a little research later, we purchased the equipment to create EVIL BOB. Want to make your own EVIL BOB? Click the clicky clicky thing!"
He probably should've hosted it at 'undisclosed company'.com but I guees it would'nt be so 'undisclosed'
i can dig it...just choose not to
This is their secret plan to get more slashdot subscribers. Post a bunch of geocities crap, so that anyone who wants to read it has to buy a subscription and get to it before it's posted. Of course, this plan will inevitably fail, since nobody actually bothers to RTFA.
Shame the site is down the video of the demo where Bob passed the Turing Test was really impressive.
This is what you get for previewing your submitions -- all that testing your link maxes out the bandwidth cap for the site! See why there are so many bad links/dupes on slahdot? It's because the editors don't want to kill the sites fore everyone :)
My other car is first.
...since not even paying subscribers had the time to read the content on that Geocities cite and we'll forget all about this before it becomes available again...does that mean that we all can post without reading the article, guessing and writing IANAL and IANAEB (I Am Not An Evil Bob) posts?
:-)
I don't think anyone will notice the difference
The clicky clicky thing is bwoken!
A Geocities site slashdotted. Well I never.
yes, we have no bananas
"Bob the IT support guy!"
"Bob the IT support guy!"
"can he fix it?!?"
"No he can't, because that's not his department, it's a software issue and it was raised with management over a month ago"
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Bob the builder? As a IT mascot? I'm dumbfuzzled... we are talking of the animated doll who are routinly seen talking to his concrete-mixer, arn't we? Not an obvious choise for a IT-department I feel (even thought his motto of "Can we fix it? Yes, we can" seems appropriate).
Well, the PHB made the executive decision; I guess the blame for Evil Bob resides with him. Still, I feel that maybe Will E. Coyote would be a better pick - can anyone come up with more suggestions?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I am a much better mascot.
Oh, I so did not expect that to be offline when I saw it was on geocities. I thought it was 1999 where Geocities is not owned by Yahoo and they don't know what bandwidth throttling is. Oh wait, it's 2003, DANG!
I bet you're one of those people that always wonders why slashdot doesn't get slashdotted.
(sorry)
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
"Can We Sue them? Yes, We can!"
-B
No we can't 'cos its on Geocities.
Looks like Spud was the editor who decided to post a story with a link to Geocities
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Lemme see... the site is Slashdotted and not cached, so I'll take a guess that 'Evil' Bob is going to express dodgy political opinions and make sexist comments at passing women.
Sounds like a fairly run-of-the-mill builder to me...
For bonus points, pull Bob's trousers down far enough to expose at least 2" of arse cleavage and give him a copy of 'The Sun' (doesn't work if he's meant to be American though...)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
hehe, 1 post? I was saying OMG as I hovered over the link. you can ./ Geocities with 1 person :)
/. these days.
Actually, that was my first reaction. My 2nd was that its been 10 years since Ihave been there, and it IS a professionally owned site. Perhaps it can withstand the
Who was I kidding?
go ahead and load up the page on the sound chip and bathe in the bgsound midi splendor that is jingle bells, banjo style (http://www.aplusinc.com.tw/reason.mid).
it's too early for this...
no... move along, nothing to see here.
Bob didn't need a mod to make him evil, he already was!
Think about it for a moment... when was the last time that you met a builder who was polite, well spoken, efficient, well dressed (no builder's bum), fixed things quickly, didn't have a copy of The Sun in his back pocket, didn't drink tea and talk football (soccer) constantly, didn't whistle at women constantly, answered the question "Can we fix it?" with anything other that "It'll cost you" and actually wore a hard hat?
One you take the talking (possessed) site equipment into consideration Bob seems very much like the Anti-Builder!
"As a morale boosting exercise, Bob the Builder was brought into our office."
At any of the places I've ever worked, that sort of thing would have killed morale. The more I think about it, the more insulting it seems.
First there is the idea of having a mascot. So the company thinks you're a bunch of high school kids and they're trying to pump you up for the big game?
Then there's the idea of a cartoon figure for 5 year olds as your mascot. I guess they don't even think of you as high school kids.
Thank the gods that I don't own a stake in your company. I would imagine that the owners of your company would prefer you guys to be working on turning a profit, not playing with toys you should have put away in first grade.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
My favorite came from the time that a box was needed to put a prototype board into. One of the engineers made a trip to the hardware store and found a battery operated radio controlled doorbell. The case was just the right size. Afterwards the guts of the thing was still lying around so afterhours the ceiling tiles in a VP's office were lifted and the bell was placed in there. The button went to the bulletin board along with a sign reading "Press Me". So, naturally, it got pressed. A LOT. The VP being your typical PHB type never could figure out where the door bell noise was coming from. And he couldn't put two and two together as he was seen, in the lunch room, vigorously pushing the button and asking "What does this do?"
The piece de resistance was when the engineer in question had a meeting in the VP's office. He took the button off the board and kept it in his pocket, pressing it at appropriate times during the meeting.
Why does this remind me of the talking bat from Babylon 5 - River of Souls? Starts as a "cheer-you-up" stress reliever saying "I love you!" and "I forgive you!" whenever you hit something with it. Once a hacking tech gets his hands on it, it makes a handsome gift for the annoying lawyer, "I'm an idiot!", "I'm a loser!", "No one likes me!", and "My mommy dresses me funny!"
But why is the rum gone?
Its sad, it seems that no one has their own imagination these days. Instead of *creating* a mascot of their own, this team could only come up with stealing a character, who's sole purpose is to sell toys.
How about Cary the Coder -- the skinny geek... or Compile Kile a dapper, leather jacket cool-dude? or Jimmy the Bug a vile insect of software-flaws..?
instead they cant break out of the mass conscienceness, and decided that BobTheBuilder is there own... sad. sad. sad.
I say F Bob The Builder, Barney and Pokemon... thiere sole purpose is to convert your children into passive consumers, to sell them stuff, keep that crap out of your lives.
Who wants to start going to Toys 'R' Us (notice it's spelt Us and not U$) and/or Amazon.com and/or where ever and going to buy a Bob the Builder, mod it...
and return it.
Well, Evil Bob can be altered at your whim. All you need to do is flip the record switch to on, plug in the cable from your Audio Out to his input (that's right folks .. Bob does it Matrix style), and press the required trigger (ie his hand, the hammer, his head, whatever) and wait for the beep. Hear the beep, press play on the sound you want recorded.
...
My favourite is his left foot. Currently, it's 'Screw you guys, I'm going home'. But it's a close second with his spanner saying 'I'm going to get medieval on his ass'
M
Robert Anton Wilson
"Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to 'Evil.'"
(It's the treehouse of Horror 3 episode)
If it's Evil Bob shouldn't it be saying stuff like
"Through the darkness of future past,
The magician longs to see.
One chance out between two worlds,
Fire, walk with me."
"Information wants to be paid"
everryone reads the article.
They just post first
From [9F04]
Doll: Guess who, Fat boy!!
Homer: [blinded, bumping around, with the doll strapped to his head]
Marge! Marge! Look!
Marge: [from the kitchen] Oh, my God!
Homer: [staggering into the kitchen] The doll's trying to kill me and the
toaster's been laughin' at me!
Homer and the Killer Doll roll about the floor and Homer has his face dunked
in the dog dish (``Eeeew! Dog water!'') Marge calls the number on the
Krusty doll box (1-900-DON'T-SUE).
Marge: Your doll is trying to kill my husband! [pause] Yes, I'll hold.
Marge lets the Krusty Co. repairman into the kitchen, to see Homer on the
floor, the doll yanking at his tongue. Picking up the doll, the repairman
identifies the problem.
Repairman: [pointing to a Good/Evil switch on the back of the doll]
Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to ``Evil''.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
User: "What do I need to do to get this work request approved?"
Bender: "Kiss my shiny metal ass!"
www.sniggle.net ("the culture jammer's encyclopedia") links to a couple of little hacks like this. In the most famous one, a group switched a bunch of voice chips between Barbie and GI Joe dolls, so Joe was saying things like "Let's go shopping!" Another interesting if less pointed experiment involved filling a bunch of teddy bears with cement and placing them on the shelves of a major toy store ...
what kind of Evil bosses do you have, if this was war and you where prisoners of war, then inflicting Bob the builder on you would be a war crime. :-)
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I wrote a bit called "Hurt Me Elmo" for Bob & Tom a few years back (on the FunHouse CD). I actually considered the possibility of having someone manufacture the little box to replace Tickle Me Elmo's factory installed laughing/jiggling box. The backlash could have generated some sales, and probably a lawsuit...
Michael
Do you have ESP?
Bob's slogan, "Yes, We Can!" (or "Si Se Puede!" in Spanish) was/is the slogan of Cesar Chaves' United Farm Workers union. Plus, Bob has a hammer in his hand. Just add a sickle in his other hand, and he's ready for revolution. Your bosses are telling you to rise up and throw off the shackles of capitalist oppression.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
it's a short, dangerous step from Bob the Builder to one of these gals. Great mascot, bad for productivity.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Lamest mascot ever!