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Why You Never Ask the Designers For a Favor
Usually there is nothing funny about a missing pet, but the tale of Missy the lost cat is hilarious. It serves as an example of just how clueless your fellow employees can be, and why you should never ask the designers to drop what they're doing, and help with a personal matter.
I think this might be the original - why not start there? There are some other articles that are funny as well.
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html
Why did you post this link to a bunch of stolen content?
The original source is 27bslash6.com, which is David Thorne's website. Which is awesome.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Look at his first reply, about the cat possibly being lying injured somewhere - what a pointlessy cruel and horrible thing to say. The owner of the cat is most likely upset enough without this moron winding her up with a comment along the lines of "oh hahaha isn't it funny, your cat is probably lying hurt and needing help lol". No, it's not funny.
I get the idea that he's trying to hit back at people trying to "waste his time" by asking him to do freebies. So, why did he waste over a day tormenting the owner of the missing cat?
What a noxious little prick.
Speaking of which, check out this awesome All Your Base Flash video!
Things they have in common: I've seen them both before Slashdot enlightened me...
Despite being incredibly funny (to the point of an uncomfortably loud outburst in an otherwise quiet office) I have to think that those two would make quite the couple. She didn't seem to badger the designer about the poster, she sent just one brief email that he could have ignored as easily as he no doubt ignores all the others. Although it was a project that would take a complete amateur no more than 5 minutes to perfect in MS Word, and a "pro" probably 10 minutes out of insistence on plodding through Frame Maker or Illustrator to achieve the same thing, the designer is understandably upset that his workload is going up. Good thing he decided to carry out 5 design projects, all off-spec, in order to spite her for asking for one very simple thing.
Those two should hook up already.
"This is the only photo of her I have she answers to the name Missy and is black and white and about 8 months old."
Cats don't answer to names.
While I'm sure you're joking, cats actually do tend to respond well to sibilant names. So in this case, "Missy" is a name a cat is likely to respond to.
Googling around at work didn't yield any articles that were both in support of my claim and cited other sources, so you'll have to perform the research yourself. I've had many cats over the years, and this seems like a reasonable observation to me. A good relationship with your cat and reasonable training usually means the cat will respond to whatever its name is, but a lot of this has to do with the cat recognizing the owner's voice, more than the actual sound the human voice is making. Much of human-range languaging phonetics are sophisticated enough that both cats and dogs are largely in the dark about them. (See Levin, 2007 for more on that.)
Sorry but his replies were priceless.
People who are taking this seriously - Do you really believe that someone snowed under with work would spend so long composing email responses, or spend so much of his time putting together silly posters?
Do you really think that the woman asking wouldn't have got the hint and done it herself? Or even if she didn't, she might have talked to someone else who would have explained things?
Or if the loss of your pet is that important, and making a poster is so simple, you could do it yourself, perhaps?
If you have an aversion to assholes, what are you doing reading slashdot?!?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Actually, both dogs and cats have shown to respond to rather large human vocabularies. The average dog, on average, is smarter than the average cat. Just the same there are plentiful examples of the smarter than average dog or cat be considerably more so. Furthermore, recent research indicates the average dog is smarter than a three year old human and cats somewhere around a two year old.
Even a visit to YouTube can show you that not only do cats hear phonetics, its possible for them to push their vocal range to the limits in an attempt to mimic the phonetic range possible by the human voice. In short, dogs, cats, and many species of birds have all shown a high aptitude for both learning and comprehending human speech. As like many young humans, they often lack clarity of context. Regardless, recognition and comprehension of their name is a skill which is exceedingly common amongst these animals. In fact, all of these animals can have human vocabularies ranging up to the thousands.
Generally when people have dumb pets its because the pet has dumb owners who in turn treat their pet as a dumb pet. Not hardly surprising. Oddly enough, the results are much the same for human children. Again, not surprising.
One of the common mistakes people have about cats is that unlike dogs, they process a large amount of communication non-verbally. A competent combination of verbal and non-verbal communication with cats goes a great distance further than does the same combination with dogs. This in turn tends to cause additional confusion with humans because they often send mixed and confusing signals; those being both verbal and non-verbal.
Actually, both dogs and cats have shown to respond to rather large human vocabularies. The average dog, on average, is smarter than the average cat.
See, that's just what cats want you to think. All that time NOT spent fetching balls and sticks is spent contemplating the inevitable rise to power.
I assumed that this was fiction based on the kind of things that do happen in real life and then exaggerated to humourous effect. Are we supposed to think this really happened and that the Thorne guy really delights in being so nasty to stupid people? Who in reality would waste so much time on something like this?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
But it is a great example of most graphic designers I know. They have far more free time than they will ever admit. Far, far too much free time. "Meeting a client." is almost always a code phrase for "I'm sorry, but I'm already drunk.".
Clearly, you should hire an MBA to write your software, a developer to design your web page, and a designer to run your company. Then all will be right in the world.
Last *month*? Thorne has been (in)famous for a lot longer than that...
http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Playground-David-Thorne/dp/0980672929
No, in this fictional story, the asshat is clearly the villain of the piece.
When I first read it awhile back, that's what I thought was the intent. The "haha, let's make fun of the idiot graphical designer" story sort of fell apart when I read his other stories, which seemed to be more about "I'll prove how cool I am by pranking other people."
Because there are at least five highly intelligent people here, and the several hundred who have listed me as friend must have some willingness to listen to unorthodox opinions that almost certainly differ from their own.
Now, admittedly, the readership of Slashdot is closer to 100,000, making the percentage of potentially civilized people rather small in comparison.
However, given that you could only half-fill a remote Alpine village with all the truly civilized, courteous yet self-respecting, intelligent people on the planet, in absolute terms roughly 10% of them must be regulars on Slashdot.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Speak of the devil. I edited down the copy a co-worker gave me for their lost-cat flyer one lunchtime back in 1999.
Just 3 words in the headline big (a short description of the cat in very very small type) and his phone number. LOOKING FOR PUSSY.
He got 10 angry phone calls in 20 minutes and got the cat in less than an hour - I shit you not. Effective advertising works.
Somebody is doing something very, very wrong here. Let me guess, you use GIMP.
Shows how much YOU know! gimp is battery powered and is completely safe.
This is clearly not a real email chain. It is what is known as a 'joke'. Why do all of the commenters take everything so seriously?
Because everyone who posts to /. is an idiot.
Except for me and the beloved Anonymous Coward of course.
It is amazing the amount of time assholes will spend on being assholes. They can be pressed for time to get their work done, yet find plenty of time to be dicks to people since they take pleasure from it.
Now this doesn't mean that this case isn't made up, but I could certainly see it being real. It follows asshole logic (such as it were) perfectly:
--Spend 10 minutes helping you: WASTE of time! How could I waste so much time on something that gets me nothing when I'm so busy!
--Spend 2 hours making your miserable: Great use of time! I derive pleasure from your misery!
No 'milk carton' missing photo?
Or a '404: Missing Cat' poster?
Have gnu, will travel.
so you can get the gist. Once again, the site is http://www.27bslash6.com/ , I personally like it, but not everyone will, or should.
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Riddick
While watching the movie 'Chronicles of Riddick' together last night, my offspring stated that he wished Riddick was his dad. When I asked why, he replied that Riddick is good looking, has muscles and is a good fighter. I told him that I wished Matthew (his arch-enemy at school) was my son because he is better at maths and has cool hair.
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One thousand characters
Writing rubbish on the internet amuses me a lot. There is often a limit of 1000 characters per post so every story (including punctuation, spaces, introduction, proposal, argument and punch line) has to be within a small paragraph.
Sometimes I just write nonsense and other times I write something rather insensitive to evoke angry responses.
When I was just fourteen, I was given the task of drowning kittens by my girlfriend's mother. I filled a large laundry sink with room temperature water and held the eight kittens under. As each kitten died and sank to the bottom, it turned and rested 'snuggled' to the previous. I put them in a garbage bag and was carrying it out when the bag moved and I heard a meow. I opened the bag and found one kitten had survived. So I drowned it again.
And that is an exact one thousand.
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Also, don't miss the Chatroulette one: http://www.27bslash6.com/chat.html
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.