The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘humor’

Stackoverflow.com, and Your Co-Workers

There are, I have heard, four personality types. They are based on introvert/extrovert, and action-oriented/analysis-oriented (and where you fall on those scales). It is interesting to think about, and it can be good to think about what you are. By thinking about that you are aware of how you communicate, and how other people around you communicate (and, if you’re so kind and wise, you’ll adapt and cater to their style).

I like to go into meetings, have an agenda, and get to work. That’s very analysis and introvert of me. Someone I work with regularly likes to chit chat about the weekend before getting to work. That’s fine.

It’s interesting to think of these personality types when you go onto forums or message boards online. Take the site stackoverflow.com, for example. This site is up there with Google when it comes to a programmers favorite tools.

Two guys I used to work with, L and J, never wanted to post to the site though. They were afraid that if they posted to the site, their question would be belittled or mocked. There is a definite risk of this happening. Like most online comments, you can get bashed for what in person would only earn you a questioning eyebrow.

Showing that you have done your due diligence (you didn’t just try and fail, you tried, failed, tried a bunch more, looked up stuff online, and still failed) AND formatting your question properly are important.

Even with these things, you will still get some asinine responses though. Which is why I think, in a community’s forum you can see a good representation of your co-workers (i.e. not YouTube comments or the comments after a deliberately comment-inducing story … a lot of those comments are the dredges of humanity).

  • The person who actually answers your question.
  • The “professor” person – the one who points you to some reading material to find the answer on your own.
  • The person who thinks they are being helpful but is just confusing you by saying too much. (Not to be confused with …)
  • The person who has no idea what they are talking about … So they just throw a lot of information out there and hope you get what you need (or maybe they think they are being helpful? It’s hard to tell sometimes.)
  • The person who uses your question as an opportunity to show how smart they are.
  • The person who you can just picture rolling their eyes as they typed their response … they may mock you for asking a bad or “simple” (in their view) question.
  • The person who just wants to argue.

What types did I miss? Feel free to comment … Heck, start a flame war. Is Google better than Apple? Is Apple better than Banana? Heyooo!

If you want to see some impressive nerdiness, check out this post on Stackoverflow … The topic is: “How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?” And you would not below how much thought goes into the responses, and just how many responses there are.

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Uncategorized

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Corporate Humor

My friend Juicebox suggested I write a post about classic corporate jokes. Oh how I loathe these. He sits right by me at work and hears when I do my fake laugh over some standard line. But I take part in these. I do the fake laugh, and I say the standard response. It’s like when you get a corporate job you’re going to a Catholic Church service. When the co-worker says “The word of the Lord” you say “Thanks be to God.”

Today’s joke that inspired this conversation was a co-worker coming in and saying, “did you miss me?” To which I replied “who are you again?” Oh so funny. Stop me if I’m too cutting edge here.

The Haircut Joke (read about my favorite response to being asked about a haircut HERE)

“Did you get a hair cut?”
“More than just one!”

The Lunchtime Joke

(Seeing co-workers walking in with food.)
“Oh lunchtime, huh? What’d you bring me?”

The Monday Joke

“How’s it going?”
“Well at least it’s not Monday!”
“Oh ho ho .. HA! Ha ha ha!”

The Any Day but Friday Joke

“Is it Friday yet?”
“Haha! Oh boy, I wish!”
“Hey (random coworker’s name who is nearby), you invent that time machine yet?”
“I’m still working on the printer that never jams that you asked for last week!”
(And then everyone instantaneously explodes out of the sheer stupidity of it all.)

That One

“Working hard? Or hardly working?”

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Du Jour of the Week

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Putting a Damper on Good News

Sometimes life is tough. I won’t give any examples because it is easy enough to know what I mean.

Sometimes, life is wonderful. Good news comes your way and makes you forget where you are. All you know is your smile and how great life is because life, at that moment, is just that bit of amazing news.

What I’m wondering is – how can announcements of good news be brought back to the realm of reality? What way could good news be delivered so that, instead of having to keep yourself from jumping with joy, you simply say, “…uh…cool…thanks?”

Let’s look at some examples …

  1. You could receive the news that you and your spouse, after trying very hard, are going to have a baby!!! … But the news is delivered by Richard Simmons, suspended from a rope, hanging outside your bedroom window.
  2. Your dream job is yours – all that work, all that preparation – it’s finally your day and you’re absolutely sure you’re going to OWN that job. This news delivered by an animatronic figure of a child, but with a 360 degree rotating head that finished sentences with a guttural cry to the cosmos rather than the traditional pause implying a period.
  3. You have won the lottery!!, this news is stapled to the back of a now (how would you like being stapled) angry lioness who has just charged through your front door. Time to pause “Scandal”, put aside your leftover pasta, and run for your life to the nearest place to claim your winnings.

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Du Jour of the Week

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