Flutterby™! : Meetings 2014-03-31 17:07:24.490076+00

Meetings

2014-03-31 17:07:24.490076+00 by meuon 12 comments

great spoof of a technical meeting at: http://www.wimp.com/theexpert/

It'd be funny, except I swear I've been in this meeting, in Spanish.

The very end is perfect.

And there will a variant of it in English at 3pm today.

Started to watch and had to stop because it hurt so much. I've been in this meeting in German, Japanese, AND English and EVERY SINGLE TIME I was the one trying to explain why something was not possible given the parameters without blowing the sale.

If PM's wouldn't always hold you to the things you agree to in meetings like this it would be different. But they do. And they do it AFTER taking you aside in the meeting and telling you to be more careful what you say because we might lose the contract.

Even when my response to that was, "Maybe we don't want the freaking contract because it is a money loser! Has that ever occurred to you?"

Oh no. Sales and PM always agree we want to get our foot in the door. Even if it means we fail. Because they figure they can manage the results once the die is cast. And because of the Dunning/Kruger Effect.

#Comment Re: made: 2014-03-31 18:26:36.590781+00 by: meuon [edit history]

I'll give Joe (the boss) credit, we have "not bid" some projects with crazy requirements, knowing there is a better chance we'll get them for the "upgrade" later after they have learned some lessons. Our best customers are conversions from other systems. They learned their lessons and already made the policy and procedure changes to the organization with someone else, we just provide better software and services. And yet... I'll have one of those meetings again soon. It happens.

So far I've gotten to 3:20 after several stops to allow my head to quit hurting. I'm kind of scared to watch any more of it due to a fear of discovering that I have PTSD from past project kickoff meetings.

#Comment Re: made: 2014-03-31 20:47:35.801673+00 by: Jack William Bell

Ummm yup. It took me more than one meeting to figure this out but it's better to just produce what is possible and then "spin" it into "looking glass" speak for the tweedles and hatters of the world. In the first 30 seconds of the video I was picturing 6 concentric circles with a line drawn through it in faded purple ink. I would have proposed the kitten upgrade be pushed back to the next version and get a research budget allocated for such a task.

It used to be fun to part fools from their money but there are so many fools now, you just want to run away and hide from the stupid.

(1) You can draw red lines using green and transparent ink, if you draw over them with red paint. Alternatively, I suppose you could layer the ink in precise layers such that the bandgap would preferentially reflect red light.

(2) You can draw a kitten with a single line, it just means it's not a straight line.

(3) You have to draw this all in at least 8 dimensions if you want all 7 lines, including the kitten, to be perpendicular to each other.

Maybe I've just been listening to too much Drabblecast recently, but I'm really intrigued by this kitten that's orthogonal across 7 dimensions...

#Comment Re: made: 2014-04-03 17:42:43.956386+00 by: TheSHAD0W [edit history]

Easy enough to conceptualize... Think about it in 3 dimensions. A drawing of a kitten on a piece of paper, and a straight line that's perpendicular to it coming out of the paper.

Just thinking about it... I think that, if more than one of the lines are in the form of a drawing rather than a straight line, they can all share one dimension. For instance, One line in the form of a kitten and one line in the form of a bird can be perpendicular to each other in only three dimensions. I think each additional line, whether it is a straight line or a drawing, would only require one additional dimension.

Yes and with N-dimensional space all line can be perpendicular. now you guys got it but shhhhhh... let me get the contract to research the stuff you just mentioned, then we can roll out Bunny8 tm with a slick new interface where you smash you thumb with a hammer to move the cursor up and jam screwdriver in you ear to move the cursor down. If an exception error is thrown a feral cat is released in your trousers..... ok yeah I've been reading Pratchett

Shadow, yeah, I totally got that the orthogonality just needed additional dimensions, that part was easy. It was the 8 dimensional cat that I found intriguing. The cat who walks through hypercubes or somesuch.

TC, if I could deploy the hardware to release feral cats into trousers when exception errors are thrown, my complaints about users would diminish to just about nothing.