A Mean Leaning Ringing Machine

(This is one of the chapters from Team Player, coming in ebook format from Double Dragon Publishing in 2006. I'll be doing something special myself with the paperback version. BTW, the building housing ErectSoft INC, the biggest software company in the world in Team Player, is the tallest building in the world and it's modeled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa.)

It all started with the widow Berta of Bernardo of dell’Opera di Santa Maria who had a dream one night in 1172 AD, or at least, a dream according to friends and relations, but not to Berta. No sir, according to Berta, her dead husband Mr. Bernardo (aka Bernie) came to her one night with much concern and worry creasing the lines of rotted flesh and matted hair on what was left of his head. In a raspish voice he commanded: “Build a tower!” and stared off somewhere between here and there with half empty eye sockets.

Berta thought about this for a moment, keeping her eyes on the floor and away from the remnants of her dearly departed’s mostly departed eye-stuff. Hmmm. Yes, build a tower. Hmmm. She looked up, with much confusion shadowing her countenance, and asked stridently: “What you say? Build a tower? What I wanna go build a tower? You binna dead too long.”

Bernie rolled what was left of his eyes and repeated: “Build a tower!” However, as it was throughout their marriage, and even now in widowhood, Berta was not one to be told what to do by anyone, least of all Bernie, who couldn’t even muster the energy to live as long as her, and she wasn’t having any of this tower business.

“What you just stand there an-a say ‘build a tower for’? I’m-a look like crazy woman to you? Is-a what you think? I’m a crazy woman? Why you think I wanna build a tower?” Bernie’s hands were shaking; his remaining strands of grayish white skin darkened with whatever terrible pigmentation the dead use for darkening; he lifted his head and arms up towards the sky in a gesture of I-told-you-so. Then he cast the remnants of his gaze directly at Berta. “You gonna build a tower, or I’m-a gonna tell every one up there all about your snore so loud at night.”

***

Just before she died in 1172 AD, the widow Berta of Bernardo of dell’Opera di Santa Maria amended her will to bequeath sixty coins to the Opera Campanilis petrarum Sancte Marie to buy a few stones for the building of a tower.

***

Those stones would eventually form the foundation of one of the most beautiful buildings on earth; also, one of the oddest. The tower was to compliment the cathedral in Pisa which was located in the “Field of Miracles” in the downtown area. What would happen to the “Torre Pendente di Pisa” (aka Bell Tower of Pisa) would indeed be a miracle.

The original architect, Bonanno Pisano, was reputed to dabble in bronze and foundries, and was, in many historical accounts, voted least likely to succeed at building a tower. But history aside, Bonnano Pisano began construction of the tower on August 9, 1173, and everything went just fine until about the third stone from the left into the third floor, at which time the builders noticed that the tower-to-be was no longer performing to specs. In fact, it was beginning to lean prominently to the north.

The experts came in and hummed and hawed and concluded: “You build a tower on-a marshy soil an-a big hole … it’s-a gonna lean.”

Which, of course, was completely wrong, the truth being that the now deceased widow Berta of Bernardo found out that Bernie had already told everybody “up there” all-about-her-snore-so-loud-at-night, and she was pissed … so pissed that she came all the way back down from “up there” and kicked the living daylights out of certain key stones in the tower’s foundation. “It’s-a gonna point to Hell, where the old bastard should-a burn his big-a-mouth ass off!” She kicked and she kicked and she kicked all night, and when she was sure that certain key stones were sufficiently weakened to tumble the tower by the time it got to the third stone from the left into the third floor, she went back “up there” and waited smugly for Bernie to hear the news of his tower in a hundred years or so.

But a hundred years later, the tower was still standing – leaning, but standing – and the widow Berta of Bernardo visited the foundation again. And again, she kicked and she kicked and she kicked all night, and when she was sure that certain key stones were sufficiently weakened to tumble the tower, she went back “up there” and waited again for the news.

But for all the wrathful widow’s heroic kicking effort, the tower instead of tumbling did an about face and started leaning to the south. Now the widow Berta of Bernardo was pissed enough to fry eggs on her forehead, so pissed, in fact, that it wasn’t until 1934, nearly eight hundred years after the first stone was laid that Berta cooled down enough that she could float down from “up there” and have at the tower one more time.

Unfortunately, for the widow Berta of Bernardo, a group of Save The Tower fanatics picked this particular year to shore up the tower’s sagging foundation with concrete. The concrete was actually drying as the widow kicked and kicked and kicked, and though she managed to increase the lean, by the time she ran out of kick, the concrete dried and solidified and the tower just hung there, a little more to the south. Nobody, of course, was aware of the widow Berta of Bernardo’s kicking rampage, so the Save The Tower fanatics, instead of being up to their ears in kudos for saving the tower, were actually blamed for making it lean even more.

The tower still stands today. It still leans. And all the elaborate plans devised by all the elaborate minds to stop the lean from eventually reaching the ninety degree level in a pile of rubble have proved about as practical as tilting the entire city to straighten the tower (which, of course, would create a new puzzle for elaborate minds … how to straighten the Leaning Town of Pisa while keeping the tower straight). On the other hand, if the tower had been built straight in the first place, the universe would have ended eight hundred years ago.

BTW, the cover art was done by Brock Parks, the same artist who did the cover for Heavy Load (a laundromance).

Driving in Fredericton Blues - The Planners

OK. So I've had some nasty things to say about the drivers in this city. It's all true. About 99 percent of drivers in this city should have brain transplants from hamsters to increase their intelligence.

Having said that, let's consider the City of Fredericton Department of Traffic Flow Planning, often referred to as those *&^*%%&*^&*(%&*()^$ IDIOTS!

No shit. Traffic in Fredericton is planned so that you hit every red light in the city no matter how you adjust your speed. Congestion is the order of the day. Bottlenecks are favored.

There's an intesection downtown right by a Tim Horton's that's been designed to ensure that somebody is killed. It hasn't happened yet but it's coming. I've seen it almost happen a few times and almost had it happen to me once. If you would like to be the first to realize it, drive across the Westmoreland Street bridge and take the Regent Street exit. Drive around to the first intersection (you'll be greeted by a red light) (no matter how fast or slow you go) and drive forward. You'll come to the intersection of Regent and King. If you're going straight ahead in the right lane, you're probably alright. If you're going to turn left from the left lane, pray first.

The lanes are narrow and the traffic is thick. There's a sign saying no left turn to Tim Horton's that's ignored, if even noticed, by hundreds of tourists every summer who probably have already turned left into Tim Horton's before they realized what that idiotic sign really meant.

There are three intersections in the city of Fredericton that have been designed to be death traps. No amount of public outcry will ever change them. That's because intelligence and common sense and a knowledge of traffic flow are absent features at the City of Fredericton Department of Traffic Flow Planning.

So much so that everybody in the department - especially the ones who synchronize the traffic lights - should be arrested and charged with obstructing traffic.

IT Industry Blues – Part 23.f3g4.292: Death of a Team Player

His name was Willie. He lived for the Team. He was respected by all and chosen above most to be on their Team. He was the penultimate Team Player.

He worked long hours. He worked evenings and weekends. He worked without question. He followed directions and never questioned the wisdom of the project manager, the quality manager, the programming manager, the marketing manager, the department manager, the sales manager, the production manager, the media arts manager, the human resource manager, the training manager, the documents manager, the employee benefits manager, the version control manager, the tool development manager, the …

One day he arrived at the office ready to work and smile till midnight. His “yes sir” and his "I'll-get-right-on-it" were impeccable, and he viewed the world through perfectly glazed eyes. His swivel chair folded around this hips like an Alpha release condom. He looked into his monitor and recognized – at some biological level – his soul swinging between the pixels of the Windows XP background.

He sat with his fingers on the keyboard, ready to map his life to the deliverables of the Gantt chart and do proud by the custom development manager, the process flow manager, the employee orientation manager, the project kick-off manager, the systems administration manager, the technical review manager, the market intelligence manager, the …

He sat with his eyes fixed to the monitor. He sat, and his fingers were motionless. Something was out of place. Something was askew. He looked around at the cubicles of the development department. Every seat was empty; every cubicle, deserted.

And the truth was revealed. He was the last Team Player. Everyone else had been promoted to manager. He was the only one left on the Team.

But there could be no Team of one.

Impossible.

He evaporated.

The Gantt chart was modified.

No one ever noticed.

And Remember: People do not exist to fulfill the needs of work, work exists to fulfill the needs of people.

IT Blues – A New Train of Thought: What About the People Whose Lives We Ruin?

And what about those online stores that promise convenient shopping right out of your home with secure and easy-to-use ordering?

Nice concept.

But will it ever happen? Probably not in our lifetimes. I mean, I can go into a bookstore and buy a book without having to create an account (unless, of course, they have some kind of buyers’ club savings package) or check off a box indicating male or female. They scan the book, ring it in, I give them money, they give me change, they thank me, I thank them, I leave the store with my book. It’s been quick, friendly and easy.

Two nights ago, I tried to order a copy of one of my own books from Amazon.com because friends had told me they had problems. I located the book and added it to a cart and clicked the button to proceed to checkout or some such page. I had to create an account to buy the book. They wanted all kinds of information from me. It took me nearly 10 minutes click through the pages and fill out the information … and then I got some bloody error message and had to do the whole damn thing all over again just to get the same bloody error message. I finally managed to get a copy of the book … from Barnes&Noble.com.

My book, eMarketing Tools for Writers, was mentioned at the Grumpy Old Bookman blog. Grumpy also had this to say: “I might have bought it but I'm afraid the complications of the Fictionwise site wore out my patience.”

He was right. One of the programmers I work with took 20 minutes to order it. He’s a web programmer and e-commerce technology developer. 20 minutes.

So much for the much touted dream of user-friendliness in our lifetimes.

I think the problem stems from the early days of online commerce. Marketers saw it as a gemstone waiting to be polished. Like, when somebody goes to your site to buy something, you quiz them a little before you let them buy. Hell, they’re already at their computers and filling out blanks, so why not throw in a few more blanks and find out something about them like their age range, sex and interests? And make the filling-in-of-these-blanks mandatory if they want to proceed to the screen where they make the actual purchase.

In other words, let’s put the screws to our customers and gather information that we can use to target them, and maybe even sell by some untraceable route to other marketers.

For instance, why the hell do I have to give my physical address when I’m ordering an ebook that will be emailed to me? Why do they need my phone number? I don’t have to give that information at the bookstore.

And then, of course, there’s all the username and password bullshit so that I can clutter my head with more useless information to the extent that I have a hard time remembering my PIN number and phone number.

Instead of gathering information, instead of trying to make an additional sale on the way to the purchase screen, instead of annoying people, online stores should just let the customer buy things quickly and easily. It’s about the sale. How difficult can that be?

And please, all you online stores, do the occasional user test so that I don’t waste my valuable time getting error messages from software that doesn’t work.

BTW, the picture above shows a thwarted online consumer driven to drink and desperation. Notice the low forehead and vacant eyes.

IT Industry Blues - Part 1.2.1: Team Playerism - A Little Theory

So what exactly is it that motivates Team Players to stop being human beings and begin being Gantt-a-holics? Stupidity? Ignorance? Naivety? Misinformation? Dysfunctional childhoods?

I have a little theory.

In my little theory, nobody makes a conscious, planned decision to go into IT. They go into it as a last resort, when all the other options are used up, when the jobs they have become so unbearable that it’s a choice between retraining to go into IT or cut off an arm or a head.

When nobody else wants you, IT has a place for you, especially the eLearning industry. It’s like an arranged marriage for the doomed, and once the marriage is consummated by that first overtime hour without pay, the full realization of the mistake reveals itself and the doomed throw themselves into a never-ending cycle of project-to-project Team Playerism – working night and day and weekends and holidays and even sacrificing vacation just to dull the senses and hide from the fact that, yes, that was the frying pan … this is the fire.

Or something like that.

And always remember: People do not exist to fulfill the needs of work, work exists to fulfill the needs of people.