hitting the wire*

What do your corporate lunches say about your company?

(finally bit the bullet and bought a Mac app to draft Typepad blog posts offline and manage postings for me. One of the very few things I missed after "switching" was a good blogging tool. Methinks it showed a bit eh?)

One of things I loved about working at Storm was the lack of ego's, sense of fun and the constant humour. Life at ViaData is much like the early days of Storm in that way, but in a company that is 13+ years old. There are two of us doing sales pitches and although the cold calling and guerilla maneuvres needed to evade gatekeepers is a pain, the pitching is fun an really rewarding when you find a need that matches the product. There is one of me doing product development, brand, marketing, pr, etc (sounds familiar, although I could really do with an Anne Hoemberg right now!) and some bright, enthusiastic people who love their product and get REALLY excited about what they're doing. Love it.

Today's musing though. We do lunch as a team each Friday - or at least anyone who is in the office joins in. We're a busy bunch, often with those 4pm/Friday crises that ALWAYS seem to appear. But team lunch is important enough to fit it in. The operation works like this:

• Around 12 Craig (MD), takes orders from the crew and calls Jakes and places the orders, stipulating the time the food must be ready 12h30.
• The crew carries on working.
  
• 12h25, five minutes before the food hits the table, we evacuate the building, pile into the biggest vehicle there.
  
• On or just after the appointed hour, we arrive, are seated, and while we're placing drinks orders, the food hits the table, followed shortly thereafter by drinks.
  
• There is time for debate (today's topic - "do you have the right to check your child's MXIT, MSN, Skype, Email history - even if you have warned them & you only have their safety at heart?"), general banter, digestion and paying the bill, before heading out back to the office...
  
• ... no more then 30 minutes past the hour!
  

ViaData is focused on delivering business value in all the work we do for customers. Very little patience is exhibited for fluffy stuff that does not add tangible value. It struck me today that Friday lunch is a corporate cultural reflection of that. Work hard, play hard, don't waste time.

Now I'm not against the odd lunch that slips quietly into supper when there is a good wine and fine company to go with it, but I wonder what your company lunches say about your company? ;)

Eskom's next ad will be based on...

Although I'm not sure that SA censors have as much of a sense of humour as the ones in the UK!

 

 

love it! ;)

855,000 handsets down the loo

Total Telecom, getting into silly season mood, sent me this frivolous gem:

A new phone you can really dig
If you don't fancy the latest in mobile Web surfing technology this Christmas, or if you're exceptionally clumsy, there is an alternative.
JCB, famed makers of 10-tonne diggers used the world over, have brought out a ruggedised branded handset, presumably for big boys who love Tonka toys.
What's more, rather than a big boring list of technical specifications, such as whether or not it's 3G and how many megapixels the camera has, the JCB phone sells along different lines, like the fact that it's waterproof, dustproof and shockproof.
Although it might also have something to do with the fact that it's 2G, and doesn't have a camera.
Aptly called the Toughphone, it comes in a yellow and black design, and as well as being available from traditional outlets, it will also be sold in equipment hire shops from February 2008.
Its sturdy design is bound to appeal to U.K. consumers: without going into too much detail, Brits drop 855,000 handsets down the toilet every year, generating a whopping £342 million in insurance and replacement costs.

That's one every 36 seconds!

I wish more Mondays were racedays!

Thought I'd better blog about it while I'm still a bit high and get it out of my system.

After doing tens of thousands of rands of damage to 2 of their cars on the first Fantastic Racing customer event we ran in 2006, Storm agreed to sign up for another 3 events this year.  Today was the last one.  Kerryn-Leigh, our marketing manager, did not have to apply much pressure to my rubber arm to sign up.  After all, I'm unlikely to be offered the chance again soon.

This is not me here in the yellow peril, but it is the car I drove.  These are Reynard 98's, with a V6 Dodge engines (that are specially governed so that they are safe for novices) that pull 450 BHP/per tonne.

I'm told they're at something like 20% of the power they would be ungoverned?  Well, 20% was just fine for me!  Flying down the back straight at Killarney where you've barely got to 5th gear and you're needing to brake and a sneaky little cross wind catches you unawares, I'm not sure giving me more power would have been wise.

 
There were a few boy racers among us (no names mentioned! ;) which resulted in a number of black flags for breaking the track rules and generally irritating the marshalls, but all in all I think everyone had a great afternoon.

If you're looking for something a little different to a booze cruise to entertain a few of your top clients, you can't go wrong for thrill here.

The guys from Fantastic Racing are very professional.  From safety briefing, to marshaling, to  looking after your every food and beverage need, they've got a slick operation running.

In the end, the black flags took some of the more reckless out of the running and Bruce, our resident bean counter, took the Best Driver Award - not exactly your epitome of a risk averse accountant is our Bruce!  Here he is checking out the cars before we'd even been briefed:

YT was awarded the Most Consistent Driver award (not sure if that was consistently average, or consistently bad?) which means I got to spray champagne over the crowd (all 20 of them).  I really must teach Bruce how to open a shaken champagne bottle without it going off in his face... :)

And Deon of course thought it was hysterically funny that they were fixing my car with duct tape seconds before I left the pit lane.

First he breaks laptops... now it's racecars!  What next?

Monday was a little crazy.  Tuesday is going to be very tame.

Oops! ITWeb / Do Broadband - you have to love the irony here!

Spotted by some eagle eyes trawling ITWeb today: This.

OK, so they've fixed the faux pas, but that has to be the most ironic juxtapostion of content I've seen in a while.

Finn wins cell chucking contest

(OK I have to admit I was WAB'ing when I found this - I'm supposed to be completing a presentation for iWeek)

According to The Register, that UK bastion of scrupulously objective and bland commentary on things telecom, tech and IT, a Finn called Tommi Huotari took gold at the eighth Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships in Savonlinna.  The distance was quoted as being "a creditable 2.77 Campbells", which led me to this Register article which defines a Campbell (among other fascinating measure such as a Bulgarian Funbag) as being 231lg (where lg is a standard unboiled linguine which is equivalent to 14cm, 0.02784 perches, 0.462 Japanese shyaku or 0.0007568 Ancient Greek stadium ptolemeys.

The distance travelled by a tantrum-driven flying PDA shall be defined in Campbells (1cB=231lg). Example: "Yeah, I asked that Foxy Brown to turn her car stereo down and she only went and threw her bleedin' Blackberry about three Campbells."

Sheesh... I thought I was pushing the envelope with the post about the airspeed of an unladen swallow!

Isn't it nice when things just ... work?

A long time since I've watched this ad for Honda Accord.  My brother in New Zealand  just sent me a link to the clip and I thought it would be worth sharing.  I can watch it repeatedly and still be amazed. 

And you thought those people that set up roomfuls of dominos to knock over were amazing. Well, people, let me tell you:  there are absolutely no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film clip you are about to watch. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it.

The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, some people in the crew were ready to change professions.  The film took three months to complete. It is two minutes long. It cost a reputed six million dollars to produce--including engineering.

However, this clip is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history.  Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free viewings" (Honda isn't paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!).
When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation - including the estimated costs.

There are six and only six  "hand-made"  Honda Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda  engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film.
Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord)  are parts from those two hand-made cars.

The voiceover is Garrison Keillor. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten.
They fell off their chairs when they found out there were no graphics. It was for real!

Oh, and about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet.

 You have to be in awe of these guys!

Which idiot agreed to this weekend schedule?

[warning - this has nothing to do with telecoms!]

Some weekends life seems to ratchet up the pace... others you actually get a chance to breathe once or twice!

Friday:
Neither Barbara or I feel like cooking - we decide to order in.  Now where we live (on a smallholding) that means Scooters pizzas.  No one else is daft enough to try to deliver to our area.  18h28 I place the order.  "39 minutes or your pizzas are free" is their motto. By 19h00 Barbara suggests I make sure they know where they are going this time as their database does not seem to want to accept our street name properly (why you might ask? yeah-well, we're like that).  They finally answered, but put me on hold... and never picked up again.  Around 19h45 I managed to find out from the manager that they had not left yet, and were "having one of those nights".... you don't say?  20h05 we fall upon cold pizza's and again get them for free.  I not sure how long these guys will be delivering to our area, or continue to be in business!  Cold, edible, slow...

Saturday
I woke to hear the pressure pump for house water supply running.  And running.  Something is not right, but what?  A quick check shows that the pump flushing the final digester for the sewage is also running ineffectively.  A bit of priming and that one settles down, but I'm supposed to have Dylan at a rugby match at 07h45 in Stellenbosch, so the pressure pump will have to wait.

We arrive to find the place deserted.  Seems the time to be there was 15 after 8, not 15 before 8! <sigh>  Fortified with coffee, we return to find the troops gathering.  Today is Rhenish u13 against Bishops.  Bishops arrive and start working through some warm-up exercises that at least show some organisation.  Ours are horsing around aimlessly.  The Bishops lads are noticeably larger and a few parents mutter darkly about an impending slaughter of our lot.  Now bear in mind I have not watched Dylan play rugby since last season when he was taken out by a few high tackles that had the medics bolting down the sidelines. 

The coaches decide to play 4 quarters of 15 minutes each instead of 2 halves to give the reserves more game time.  The parents look decidedly nervous.  Well, the Zulu have a saying about not judging a bull by it's horns.  The Bishops lads, although large, don't seem to have much fire in their bellies and can't tackle.  Either that the Rhenish u13B team have finally worked out how to play as a team.  They strung together some decent moves, ran some good lines, and managed to get a few quick wings away.  The final scoreboard tells the tale (that's a 6 before the 5 on the left hand side). Sometimes you have to get your victories vicariously. ;)

Back to the pump.  Did not take long to find that the non-return valve was not non-returning and the pump was trying vainly to pressurize the 2,000l tank out back.  3 hours later I'd replaced the part, relocated pump and pressure tank, and climbed into the ceiling to scrub the inlet filter to the geyser.  Friends stayed for supper.  Knackered by 10pm.

Sunday
Doug Banks had invited me to join himself and few other "too much work and not enough play" types like ourselves on a hike up Table Mountain.  I'd agreed.  Waking I regretted having said yes, but by 10am when I arrived at Kirstenbosch, the day was blossoming and I was looking forward to some fresh air.

Up Skeleton Gorge (somebody's been (ab)using my knees without my knowledge I swear!), across to McClear's Beacon for lunch, on along the front edge of the mountain with the haze and smog clearing as the day wore on, to join the cable car hordes at the top of Platteklip Gorge.  Somehow my suggestion of descending via Fountain Ledges and India Venster was mooted.  We passed some excited types who had just completed the commercial abseil from the cable station, and a pair of rock-jocks taking on a Trad route.

The hairier bits of the descent seemed to have some of the party wondering seriously about my sanity, but 16h50 had us safe down at the Lower Cable station with only minor cuts and bruises and legs that resembled jelly.

That's me... needing a rest!

Enough of this now!

This is definitely the coldest Cape Town winter I can recall for a long time.  I tried to find historic data on the weathersa.co.za site, but all they give is 30 year averages, no trends.  Which is strange come to think of it, considering all the hype around global warming and climate change. Anyone know of some raw data on local maximums, minimums etc?

I've lost count of the times my car has told me it is 2 degrees C or lower in the mornings lately.  This is Cape Town, not Sutherland!  Thermostat's gone wonky.

Here's 2,000 words:

and we're facing a LPGas shortage!

I suppose I should be glad we don't have Barmy Bob decreeing that all retail prices must be halved as if that will solve Zimbabwe's woes.  Certifiably Barking Mad.

that's me. chilled.

what next... a virtual braai?!?

There are times when the use of IT to implement virtual reality makes me wonder if it's just me and all the other jokers are driving the wrong way down the M1, or what?!?

Checking out a suspiciously good deal on Dell laptops (not quite as good as it would have been if the blaps Henk Kleynhans and his mates spotted had paid off, but a good one nevertheless), an ad for what I can only think of as the DVD version of mood music caught my eye...

The virtual fire.  Just plug in the DVD, adjust your screen and volume, and voila, you've  all the mood that homo cavus or whatever he was called got out of a good blaze, without all the fussy, messy, time consuming stuff!

Not only that, but hey you can choose what type of fire you'd like!  Maybe you'd just like some glowing coals... or a gas fire, or ... hey, what about an electric fire!

I vaguely get the idea of a fishtank simulation... but this is just one step before some schmuck tries to tell me a pill with all the protein of a steak, with some esters for aroma and taste and a fake fire DVD can replace a braai.  If anyone ever does I'll make sure they use it as an enema!

Fake fire.  pah!