Its almost a New Year!

The last company meeting of the year was lead by the Three-Amigos. I think Franks-Mom had to put them up on a pedestal in order to keep some kind of control over them. They did a round up of what's going on in each of their areas. I know that a bunch of people had to control their mouths as they went through their slides. Basically they slammed Constantine and Euro-Fool for all the architectural flaws, wrong direction on the technical roadmap, over commitment and under delivery. They did not do this by name, just implied it but it was so shallow that any body could see thought it.

And then I thought, what was the point of that. Yes you won, perhaps by means that will not put you in good standing for the rest of your careers, since who the f**k is going to hire you again or recommend you when a VC comes calling. And I thought about it more, at the end of the day its Monday Morning Quarterbacking, something they seemed to have picked up from Henry. Don't say anything at the time, say that you "had to go along with it", don't actually make the effort to get it working and delivered right and then blame everybody else when it does go to shit. You know, a lot of Nazis were rounded up and shot after World War II for that type of behavior, what could the modern day equivalent be? Post your answers in the comments section.

In other news, we had a site outage for three nights (unplanned). Apparently, to add some more capacity to our Kodak SAN, they had to do a firmware upgrade. With our kick ass staff, on the third attempt we got it right. Sweet, we added another 30GB of disk. Yes I did say GB and not TB, our site really does not generate enough transactions to need a 1TB drive from Fry's. Probably cheaper and probably would have worked out of the box.

Why does it have to be so friggin' hard at this place? God, I need a drink. Happy New Year.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 13 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 195 lbs

Everything delayed!

Well, that's my interpretation. We had a "CEO" update because Henry was in town and I guess wanted to show his new tan. It was 60 minutes of partnership opportunity this, amazing interest that, great conversation with XYZ (i.e. nobody you and I have ever heard of), blah-blah-f'ing-blah.

Right at the end, just before the whole front row fell asleep he said "..and finally...". We all jumped to attention, perhaps it was a Steve Jobs moment and he would pull out our iPhone app after 18 months of waiting. Even better, it would be our IPO papers. No even better than that, our acquisition by American City Bank!

None of those. He produced a long list of all the areas where we have saved money. All from reducing the pencil count, reducing the size of the coffee cups, you name it, it was there. The Asian dude who always falls asleep at the front, woke from his slumber and asked if that included all the people that were rifted.

I have never seen Henry turn that red so quickly. He marched up to the guy and asked him to add his name to the list and "F*k off back to f*ing ***** you f*ing ****" (censored to protect the young and innocent). Iron-Mike was seen marching him out of the office a few minutes later.

The net effect of the cuts? Well, we can't get shit out into production anytime soon. Mega Enterprise is delayed (well Henry said "Rationalized"), there is some project we have to do for American City Bank called "Moonbeam" which Henry says is going to be mega critical to close them as a customer. He also needed it to close a bunch of other New York banks. Sounds like the Shopping Cart all over again. So lets all hold hands, sing "Kum Ba Yar", and almost build and release something before its canned again.

Henry closed the meeting with a "Its been great connecting with you". Sure, now f**k off back to NYC (please).

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 7 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 193 lbs

Copyright fiasco!

Only Hank Commerce could screw up like this. It now all makes sense why Stan, our VP of Products and the creative genius behind Hank Orange Soda (tm) has been on a leave of absence. Literally a whole battalion of lawyers pitched up this week and seized a pile of materials and numerous hard drives. Turns out that Hank Orange Soda (tm) is a carbon copy of some soda drink from of all places Scotland. The rumor is that Stand simply copied the whole color palette thinking that nobody is Scotland would be paying attention. But global brands have a global presence, including their lawyers.

Just thinking about that, we are going out there saying we are the next big internet story and BAM! We use somebody elses copyrighted color scheme... and Stan thought no one would notice. What a dumb ass!

The creative team have been working 24/7 and trying to get a proof signed off by Henry. He's in New York this week, he's engaging in multiple partner opportunities (aka trying to scrape up any sort of deal). He sent out an email blast to us all about the "9 - 5 culture". Sure, we just work those hours only, are you kidding? I guess he has to break from the hectic contract negotiations at 5pm to get to the nearest bar to get a "well deserved" Martini, while the rest of us get this thing done. What a jack ass. The creative team are pulling their 'fros out tweaking the PANTONE by slight increments, well that's what they tell Henry. The simply have three variations, which they give them to him in rotation, basically saying that they did as he asked and here's the new sample. They are too bust playing Ms. Pacman to really put in a days work.

Henry loves to email from his Blackberry. Its a bad state of affairs when your CEO is telling the staff to "ENGAGE" and that the company is "NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT". Dude, haul your ass of the beach, New York or where ever the f**k your normally are and get into the office and engage with your staff in your company! The CEO is not a Monday Morning quarter back position, is not a spectator sport like you seem to think it is. You have to really put in a days effort like the rest of us. Roll your sleeves up and ENGAGE!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 7 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 194 lbs

Euro-fool leaves!

Wow. I have never seen Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so happy. You could see he smile all the way from the East Bay where he lives. I'm super happy about Euro-fool leaving, he was such an arrogant guy, always thought we has better than all of us. So what if he had a cool clothes and a Porsche Cayman.

I went drinking in the city with the "Three-Amigos" to celebrate, they got shit faced. Stacy was so wasted he picked a fight with some Mission hipster (and lost) and that was just after three beers. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir went around hugging everybody in the bar like they were all some long lost friends, Lonely-James drank a Miller Lite by himself at the end of the bar. He can't take his beer either. Had some Indian food after the beers, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said it was the worst he had, and then phoned up Constantine to say that he was so sorry for the shit he did to him. You could hear the reply of "Go F**k yourself" from across the bar.

It came out that they had forced Euro-fool to quit, they now have Franks-Mom in the right place so that they can continue to enjoy their lives and f**k around and she gets to carry the can. When the next shit hits the fan they will use the same story with Henry, that she is out of touch, does not get it, their passion shows their commitment, staff aren't behind her etc. The key is that they stick together and back each other up, if Henry tries to fire one of them then the others say they will go as well. Its one sweet deal.

I know who is really running this place!

The good news is that I think the Platform team will finally report into us, which makes perfect sense and I know that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir always wanted this.

So things are finally looking up, at least for the Three-Amigos.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 18 (death of euro-fool celebration!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 195 lbs

Give thanks!

I have a lot to give thanks for this Thanksgiving. Here's the short version

• I did have a well paying position, lately its not looking so great
• I did work with some great people, after two rifts and departures most have gone
• I have worked on a number of projects, most delayed or canned
• I did get a bunch of stock options, I don't think they will ever be worth a dime
• I did get put on a performance improvement plan, but I beat that rap
• I do have a manager who has a split personality, I mostly get the crap half
• I do get the pager, the pager always rings all the time, endlessly
• I did get food until they took that away
• I did get alcohol, they took that away, but I started drinking at my desk anyway
• We did have some cute girls, they are all getting married, rifted or got a real job
  
• I did work on some cool technology, until I started converting PL/SQL into JavaScript
• I have more changes in senior management that hot lunches recently
  
• I do work for a technology company that won't adopt new technology
• I do have a CEO that spends too much time in a tanning salon

So thank you, I'm in a special place and I know it.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 8 (i'm trying to cut down!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 194 lbs

More graphs! Awesome!

Another week and another weekly all-hands meeting. I don't really get the point. Sure, I love open and transparent communication. It lets us see what is going on, give us data and then shows us ways to analyze it to allow us to draw our own conclusions. Pretty sweet if we have data to talk about.

Don't give the same graphs, just changing the colors or fonts we can see through that. What is says is that you have no idea on what is going on. I did give credit this week, all the graphs were different. Wow, things must have changed! After my initial enthusiasm I was drawn back to the slough of despair when I see that they changed the scale to make the growth look more impressive. As they say there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. Henry loves his statistics.

So news to report this week? Well Geek-Babe is "glowing" and I am shocked how much she has got done this week, especially being slowed down by the size of that ring. If ever we need to break a window to escape (like a fire or something) I know what I'm going to use to cut the glass.

We had another release, it was pretty much along the same lines. QA sign off, PMO sign off, Frank's-Mom signs off. Customer use it, many production tickets, stuff being broken, integrations not working, people can't change their passwords, new functionality plain not working. We get through to the "Monday Peak", which basically means that lights dim across the eastern seaboard as we crank up the CPU horsepower simply to process a few dozen transactions. This is also know as "the same old shit".

Its all rather depressing. I'm still eating the Diwali candy from our "celebration" the other week. I was shocked that Iron-Mike from HR did not ban the whole thing. Think about it, especially working in California. You arrange a work sponsored event. You ask staff to spend time decorating and preparing events. You then ask for "volunteers" to take part in the "competition". Basically that involved a number of partial clothed women dancing in a provocative manner while the judges (aka F-Staff) "judge". If Frank's-Mom was a man she would have been taken away to San Quentin, no questions asked, do not collect $200. How come women get away with this shit?

Anyway, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir seemed to enjoy himself a little too much by the display and could not seem to walk straight afterward. That would seem another HR violation.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 9 (the shame of it all!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 193 lbs

Geek-babe is getting married!

I bet that got your attention. You may be thinking, lucky guy. I know, I know. How did a geek pull off the coup of the decade and get the hottest, geekiest girl in the valley. I would like to say it was something to do with the awesome party in Cyprus.

The truth is much more difficult. After our last argument on our first date on the merits of District 9 versus Alive in Joberg our paths split. We, sorry she, hardly even acknowledged me at the Latte station in the morning, and certainly there was never an open seat at the company meetings next to her. I got the cold shoulder, but I was in it for the long term. I could turn her around, just like Henry is doing for the company.

I made sure there was an extra Dunkin' Donut left on her desk, a flower on Valentines day, just your regular stalker stuff, nothing overkill. Perhaps washing her car during the lunch break was just slightly over the line.

And then the true horror of it all. I got word that there was a secret party being planned. Sweet! There was going to be food and plenty to drink. Sweet! It was to congratulate Geek-Babe's engagement to Beam-Me-Up. Sweet!

Hey, hold the presses. What the f**k is going on? How did he muscle in on my girl? Why are they holding hands? Why does she look so happy in the wrong mans arms?

Things just could not have gotten any worse.

Sure, lets be happy for the happy couple. I just have a pile of PL/SQL to convert into JavaScript with the debugging capability of a drunk Ops guy. My life sucks and it sucks today because I'm trying to drink away the pain that Geek-Babe is trying to get away from me! She will see her mistakes, I can turn this one around, just don't let me say "told you so".

Another Henry, blah-blah-blah presentation. Bar charts have not changed in weeks. Who's he trying to kid?

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 18 (the shame of it all!)
Dinner : 1 nights (marriage celebration!)
Weight : 192 lbs

New VP!

Well f**k me. Franks-mom is made VP. I did not see that one coming. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed, he thinks it should have been him since he had given so much already. He's happy that's its not Euro-fool. We went drinking in the city with him after the announcement and he slurred about how he got one over Euro-fool. He did not make a lot of sense after his seventh Whiskey, but something about the "Three Amigos" and the deal of a lifetime with the devil.

Made me think after I got over the hangover. It was probably something to do with all the closed door meetings I saw him, Stacy and Lonely-James in, and then later with Iron-Mike and Henry. I guess they must have been planning for weeks on how they would get leverage for what they wanted. That's a pretty sweet and balls-to-the-wall move.

Nobody has seen Euro-fool, guess he got f**ked by just about everybody. Shame, but that's what happens here. The old guard back themselves up and have a gun against Henry's head.

Things have not changed much with Franks-Mom, the schedule is still impossible, the every other week release followed by the daily patching. She seems a little more stable than Constantine but she does not code so its going to be tough to see who drives the direction. Sure was can have the Henry-deal-of-the-day-feature or some more shuffling pixels around the screen. What has to change is architecture of the dot-com-era. Stored procedures? No thanks!

Mood is pretty somber around here since Constantine's departure. Hope Franks-Mom can make a difference.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 12 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, but we have a VP now!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 lbs

Yo! I need cash too!

Ethics are a funny thing, especially in a startup. Its not unusual for a founder to take money out during a round of funding. The basic theory is that they have been paying themselves almost nothing to get the company going and have been putting their hearts and souls into it, company first themselves second. They get funding for the company, they get some cash in their pockets. Not a big problem.

So lets say hypothetically that you get a round of funding. You take out a nice phat pile of cash. Who knows what you spend it on, but that tan sure suits you and that's one sweet ride you have now.

Then lets say 6 month later you have to let a whole bunch of people go because you have over extended yourself. Not a problem, these things happen right. Economic meltdown-blah-blah-blah.

Then lest say your cash position gets tight again, its only been 9 months but you spent too much. So you get another round of funding. During that negotiation you manage to take some more money out again. Its just over a year since you last took money out, but you have such an elegant and extravagant lifestyle that you really need that sort of cash. Oh, you have to cut staff in this round as well. No problem.

You run the numbers just before you fire your CFO and then find that there is not enough headroom for you to take more cash out. So what do you do? Give up on your cash? No, what you do is give your managers a cash figure that they need to cut in addition, covering the cash you want to take out. How do they do that? Well cut the thing that eats the cash... staff.

The moral dilemma. You have to raise funding twice in 18 months. You have two rounds of rifts. You cut extra deep on the second. You take cash out twice.

Is that great leadership? Probably not. Can you claim the morale high ground? Probably not. Have you been managing your cash position well? Probably not. Do you put your staff first? Probably not.

Henry would never do that sort of thing, if he did there would be a riot and everybody would start leaving. His new Aston Martin is rather nice though, kind of a baby blue.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 9 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we still don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 193 lbs

H Staff disappear!

Feels like there is some sort of Stalin like purge going on. Let me recap

• Tori quits. This was a few month back, but had a better offer from one of our Advisors so the whispers are saying
• CFO disappears. We think he was fired, but may have quit. Perhaps he just had a difference of opinion with Henry.
• Constantine definitely quit, but has lawyers chasing him, probably after his parking permit
• DJ quit, according to Henry to "find himself"
• Stan is "on leave". After the slam-dunk of the Hank Orange Soda (tm) color scheme, I'm not sure whats going on there, perhaps he needed to rest after that effort.
  
• Guy who ran support, nobody remembers his name, been here for ages, but has an accent, gone as well. Probably fired.

In terms of H-Staff that leaves

• Henry
• Arnold the VP of World Wide Sales

Henry should have just rolled in some NRA buddies, told them we were all "commie-pinkos" and had us all shot. The blood seems to be running down the corridors and I don't want to spoil my Nike Air Jordans in white that I won on eBay last week.

Just to break the monotony of the constant departures, Henry has been showing us on a weekly basis the latest customer acquisitions and transactions. Weirdly they were as red as the blood in the corridors and also remarkably never changing week after week. If I read the charts right green is good, red is bad. I'm not sure how you can stand up and talk for an hour on basically nothing. We do love Henry, but Henry does love the sound of his own voice. Time for a drink.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 13 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we still don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 lbs

Constatine leaves!

Never seen a guy so happy in my life. People say that this was "how he used to be". I guess working for Henry can be tough, he's a task master most extreme.

But wow. What a shock. We all though he was in for life, without parole, plenty of long term benefit but lots of short term effort and stress. He's said he would stick around for a month to hand over to the new guy. No word on who that may be. I'm thinking Euro-Fool, which Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir would be pissed at, but that would make the most sense. Despite his garlic breath he has actually worked on platforms and infra-structures for decent sized and successful companies. I pray to Jesus that we don't have an Applications person run the team, that would totally take us down a path of zero interesting architecture work. It would be totally like, dude, put your head in the sand.

Saw Constantine a day or so after it was announced. He looked angry and then he totally vanished. Apparently there was some big shouting match in Henry's office and "Fuck you asshole", slamming doors and he was gone. Saw Henry and he brushed it off. Apparently there are lawyers and everything. That's some bad shit for it to end up like like after all the effort and success Constantine has brought the team. I'm sure they both have their reasons but it feels totally rudderless with Constantine's guiding light.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 16 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 lbs

Calculator company shutdown!

Its not clear what Henry is doing, at least to me. I hope that he and the board have a plan.

So we buy this online calculator company after another round of funding last year. The idea was to embed this in all our applications. It basically would become a service so every application would calculate correctly. It was marginal at best, but I'm sure there were other reasons.

However, the technology was a total mismatch but their team were awesome entrepreneurs, real salt of the earth types. They were in some part of the country that most of America flies over, but they are just a few states over from my hometown. They were my brothers.

So Constantine and Iron-Mike fly out there this week and basically shoot them all. They had to have a security guard because those guys pack full on assault weapons in their trucks, just in case the Soviets invade or they see a sweet buck.

So they killed them all, apart from a couple of "keep the lights" on. Its totally bogus. What do we do with their customers? Not clear, but certainly getting features is not going to happen fast if you don't have the staff. Apparently Stacy and his team are going to re-build it at HQ and hire a new team. That's bogus, that dude has totally not delivered iPhone since I have been here. There are companies that have made a fortune and then sold themselves to Apple in a shorter period of time. I hear from one of the architects that they are going to rebuild in Rails and MySQL, that's a totally High School project tech stack. I mean that is already so last century dude! I know Stacy reads Techcrunch, always forwarding links to the "this is so cool, we have to buy/integrated with this" headline. The dude is so last year.

My heart goes out to the Calculator dudes. Great idea which they were executing on. Got screwed twice, first by getting bought and second by thinking the purchase would allow them to expand and hire. Its a shame, but another example of a poorly thought out strategy, executed by the incontinent.

I'm starting to see why we burn through cash. Sure you have to throw some spaghetti against the wall to see if its sticks. You don't need to throw the whole pasta aisle at Safeway to see if two strands stick. Some people say "scatter gun approach", I say "squirrel".

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 14 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 191 lbs

That guy was packing!

So its was a super shocking day. They did it a little differently this time. All those being rifted was rounded up by there manager and marched into a room. Sort of Nazi gas chamber moment.

Then Henry, Javier and Iron-Mike (aka Old-Dude-In-HR-That's-Cool) stood up at the front of the room and went over the details. Basically you are all crap and we don't have the cash so you have to go. Not really, they did not say that. They said that their contribution was enormous but the organization needed to move on and without them. I'm sure that everybody though the former. I heard this all from a buddy who was let go. I trust him, so it must have gone down like that.

This time they had a security guard, just in case we had any of the bad shit happen again. I don't know where they found this geezer, but I'm sure he could have been out run by a dead turtle. Yes, he was that old. And even more shocking he was packing! The Ops guys must have been in hog heaven seeing that side-arm.

So, lets say some bad shit went down. First this guy had to pull himself up and get his walker into position. Then move over to where the ruckus was. Then pull his gun and shoot. I saw his shaking in his hands, so probably would shoot the wrong person first so would have to try again.

Its some bad shit when you have to packing heat just to fire people. I'm sure every week, Donald Trump does not need a guy packing "just in case".

There was some rumoor going around that Loney-James and his band of Merchandising gurus were all let go. Somehow, and boy this must have been a deal with the devil, they all got to stay. Not a single person let go. Its funny to see them wash Henry's Aston each morning, but I guess that's what you have to do to stay working here, kiss lots of ass and suck the occasional dick.

Life sucks here, I just drink to make it through each day. Nobody seems to give a shit.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 17 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 190 lbs

Oh shit we are dead - part deux!

I'm not sure I believe Henry any more. I came on board and genuinely thought we were going to change the world. And to some extent I think we did. Just after I join we landed a bunch of cash. Sweet, that should see us past the finishing post. In the interview it was all about IPO and killing the market. More money, carefully managed made sense to reach that goal.

Turns out that Henry has been acting all Bernie Madoff. I'm not sure quite how he did it, but he convinced our investors to give him more cash, its some round of funding that nobody has ever heard off, "H", "J" who the f**k knows. Its at the end of the alphabet that only Sesame Street knows about.

Apparently Henry had to give up stock to make the deal happen. Means that we burnt, literally, though all that cash in less than a year. Betcha our income did not balance this out.

Henry's pitch at the company meeting (he was on the phone from New York) was that this is all we need to make the company cash flow positive and make a pile of cash. He's brought Henry on-board, his brother from another father (really, his mother liked the name so much she used it twice) to become Chief something, Cash Operations I think. It confusing with so many Henry's but this one is from American City Bank. Perhaps he has the balls to keep Henry's expense account under control.

So why don't I believe in Henry? I don't know. Its the same old story, the next feature, the next customer is suddenly going to turn the corner for us. That customer or feature, the one we don't have, is going to make the difference. I have heard this all for 18 months and its wearing thin. You know, you read these stories or watch interviews with people who have been abused. Its the same story, you love them so much that you think they will change and tomorrow will be better. In reality each day is ever so slightly worse than the next. Its also tough to make friends and build relationships with people when they are gone in a few months, either because we have another round of lay-offs or they leave for a better place. You start to loose interest in building relationships or product for that matter.

And our investors did not give all the cash we needed, so we had to fire a bunch more people. I survived, at least this round. Another cut in pay and some more worthless options. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was all gung-ho after. He got the team together to "motivate" them, in his normal fashion he missed the point and instead of listening to our concerns he just talked about himself and Henry and spent no time to understand us. He makes me puke.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 23 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 189 lbs

Office move!

Another office move. I'm not sure that this is a great use of the investors money, but it kind of makes sense. With the trim down last year and the constant departures it no longer makes sense to be on three floors. Stacy put the plan together and we all packed our crates. The floor plan makes no sense, basically its puts our team at an opposite end to Euro-Fools platform team. It may mean we just get more exercise having to walk down there, but it may also mean that we can just ignore those idiots!

Euro-Fool has been under fire, Mega Enterprise is running so late its making the rest of us look great! Truth be told its nothing to do with the code that was written for Mega Enterprise, its all down to getting the product through QA. I think all the directors are relying on Apps to be the long pole so that they can fix up all their code without Constantine knowing anything about it, just blame Apps. Its an easy target but a great target! There also seems to be less Apps QA people as well these days.

So its weird being back in the new old office. I see where I was interviewed, where I sat in those first few formative months when I started, the place where I got my first build to work, the smashed wall where Beam-Me-Up punched a hole with his bare fist and the first time I saw Geek-Babe. Ah those memories.

Since then they have painted in the new corporate look for Mega Enterprise, Hank Orange Soda (tm), its pretty sweet if you don't have a hang over. I did notice that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir now gets in even later, probably working really diligently with Ops I guess.

Seen Stacy, Lonely-James and Cab-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir (aka Three-Amigos) in a bunch of meetings. Weird group to have together, sometimes Zen-Dude is there, sometime not. Not just in the office, but at Una-Mass and at Starbucks. Probably some product planning or something big and important for Hank Commerce.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 7 (I can remember why I drink, but I do)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

Another CFO is fired!

Well that is the big rumor, I don't know for sure. Its kind of weird that Henry would fire his Brother-From-Another-Father after such a short time as CFO, that has to be the shortest time at that position in Hank Commerce's short history!

I spoke to one of Lonely-James' lieutenants and he was told that it was to bust up the coup plotters. Wow! I mean Henry is a bit of a tyrant but you only have coups and mercenaries when you try to overthrow a despot, not Henry. Everybody loves Henry! I love him as well, but only in a fatherly way, not in that Castro way.

It blew my mind that some of the backchat appears to be true, a coup? Wow. Who has the vision of Henry and the ability to execute and grow the company like he has been doing? Who has his Track record? None of H-Staff comes to mind, apart from perhaps Franks-Mom. She could kick some ass in an ass kicking contest. Super fierce!

I'm not so sure its true. I mean, I walk past his office most days and he's never there so an empty office means nothing. And what does Henry have to gain by an empty CFO slot, how can we go IPO like that? The markets would never dig it.

Looks like Stacy, Lonely-James and Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir have been meeting to work out the new office plan, more of that next week. I know that's a tough job, but meeting five hour a day for the last week seems overkill. I'm sure the Three-Amigos will get it right.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 9 (I can remember why I drink, but I do)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs

Mega enterprise "de-scoped"!

It was not if but when. We had been trying to grind out a result on Mega Enterprise. The bugs have been burning down far too slowly. QA appear to be going backwards, the rumor is that Franks-Mom has been pulling QA people to work on other projects to make Mega Enterprise look worse.

Henry got the team all together in the board room. He got the design team to pull up each screen one by one and he then shared his knowledge and insights into being successful in this space. Basically he thought it all sucked, he could have done it better himself (if he had the time) and that he can't believe that he has been let down again by his management team (no surprise there). Well at least that's what I heard he said.

He asked the leads to get together with Product Management to come up with a new plan. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said "I told you so" in his staff meting. He basically told Henry at the start this was a waste of time unless he was leading the effort and when Euro-Fool took over then he was going to make damn sure that it was going to fail.

Henry took Euro-Fool aside after the meeting. They seemed to have a long heart to heart. He looked like he was crying when he left. What a lame ass!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 9 (celebrating Mega Enterprise being postponed)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs

I beat my performance improvement plan!

I had to laugh. I have had Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir check my hours, all my check ins and my dates for delivery like a friggin' hawk. So its my fault for asking Constantine why I did not get the promo that I had been promised, but the medicine that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir punished me with was a like, dude this totally sucks I'd rather drink eggnog.

So I had my follow up with Old-Dude-In-HR-That's-Cool and he basically said that if this was a cop show on TV I would have beaten this rap before the first commercial. He did not sign off on it, but Henry said that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir gets what he wants, he's mega key to the success of the organization.

So what the hell, he lost and I won. We had our regular 1:1 where he basically said "I knew you could do it, I have the faith". Bullshit. He just didn't like the fact that I stood up to him and escalated when I saw I was being screwed. He did not like that fact that I beat his rap. He did not like the fact that despite his best attempt I rose above it all and won!

So the work? Its kind of crap right now. We are in the death march that Mega Enterprise has become. We are grinding out a result just like the Yankees, not fun to watch but the result will be another world series.

Henry seems pretty joyless at the moment. Stacy said something about another assistant being let go, I'm thinking that was probably the leggy blond this time. I asked him "How's it going" in the elevator. He told me to "Go fuck your pimply self". Sure I could do with more Clearsil, but dude don't make it personal, I can't help my zits.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 18 (celebrating beating my performance improvement plan)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs

Glasnost!

Wow, Henry was not joking when he said that he was going to be more open and transparent, we have our own version of Glasnost breaking out! Instead of Ronald Reagan, Star Wars and Gorbachev we have Bruce and a whole bunch of powerpoint graphs. They were awesome!

I had hung out near the back, its always easier to sneak away if the speaker is really boring (which is normal). Its better than falling asleep in the front row like that Indian dude keeps on doing, that really make Henry mad. Most of the data presented was in 12 pitch font so tough to read, but here's what I gathered

• We have lots of bar and pie charts in an amazing array of colors
• Our Graphic Design team can do some sweet animations in powerpoint
• All the graphs are up and to the right

I don't know what this really means. Each time Bruce got into the weeds of what the data meant, Henry would jump is an give a super high level explanation why this was important and push aside the ridiculous questions people were asking, like "When we will be profitable". I mean, we are going to be profitable when Henry says we will be and that should be good enough for everybody! It sure is good enough for me.

At the end, Franks-Mom stood up and said that is was amazing that Henry has started to share this information with the team and started a round of applause that was joined by maybe seven people, but I totally understood the sentiment.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 6 (I don't give a crap, so I drink at my desk)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 186 lbs

My date sucked!

So I had my date with Geek-Babe. Ok, it turns out that it was not a date, I had thought it was a date, she did not. We saw District 9, which was a total popcorn movie, but despite the mega budget and effects I preferred the original Alive in Joburg. I think that's where things started to go wrong. We had a cocktail after (me a Cosmos, her a Mojito) and then I asked "that" question. Needless to say that I was told to "go f**k myself". So I went home and did just that.

Not much else has been going on, we are trying to grind out a result on Mega Enterprise, the QA burn down is as long as ever but everybody thinks the Applications QA lead is "doing great". Henry promised that with the new CFO in place he was starting a new phase of being open and transparent. He said that he was start sharing information "soon" and that H-Staff had been letting him down. He had asked and asked for regular meetings and updates, but everybody let him down again and again. Henry is one tough customer!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 4 (I don't give a crap, so I drink at my desk)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 185 lbs

DJ quits!

Wow! I was not expecting that one. DJ runs all of our operations across all our geo regions. His crew are crazy but do a swell job, at least when they are not packing on a release night. They all like guns far too much for my liking and I'm from the mid-west.

Never seen somebody with such a big smile. Henry announced his departure at the company meeting, said that he was going to "find himself". Stacy thinks he will continue to write his political blog and may even run for a state seat in the elections in the fall. He's some sort of Libertarian, which when I first heard that I thought he was in favor of people who file books in a Library!

Constantine has taken over Operations in the short term. I think this makes sense, we need to get the Engineers and Ops guys closer together, we have too much of the "throw it over the wall" attitude. If anybody can bring the groups together I think its Constantine, since those guys really respect him.

Looking forward to my first date with geek-babe next week. That is going to be sweet! Is there love in the air? I hope so!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 8 (I don't give a crap, so I drink at my desk)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 184 lbs

My brother from a another father!

Henry loves his stories. So we had a company meeting on a Tuesday this week, weird but we often have them because Henry is here. So he introduces Henry, one of the board members. Most people have seen him around and Henry always describes him as his bother from another father. Its a strange way to talk about somebody, but its clear the love they have for each other. Not in a gay way, just the fact they like to hang out, enjoy fine dining and wines and that type of thing. I'm from the mid-west, we like to go down to the bar and have a few cold ones with our close friends and don't do this fine-dining.

Since I have been here we have had several CFO. I guess their challenge has been in keeping up with all the cash they have to count. It must be a tough job given how Henry is closing business development deals and Arnold his VP of Sales is "killing it" (Henry's words). It must be such a drag to come in each day and count dollar bill after dollar bill.

The last CFO lasted, probably six week at best. He was introduced at one company meeting and then was kicked out by the next. Apparently he wanted to trade in our ERP system for Excel and Microsoft Project because they are "industry standards". Henry was pissed because that was not what a pre-IPO company needed, so Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir told me, they need Oracle or SAP implemented.

So Henry announces that Henry is the new CFO. Wow! That is super big and important news, we must be so close to announcing our IPO. There have been several successful IPOs in the last few months, I can feel we are close too.

He looked a bit nervous, we are a pretty intimidating bunch. There was a Q&A and somebody asked "As a investor, what do you think of Hank's potential".

What followed was a meandering monologue that in simple terms said we are f**ked. Sure, we may make it if the sun is in the right place, wind behind us and there is a zee in the month. But, its super competitive and we have not shown a dime to the investment community in ten years. Perhaps the best outcome is that we become an IT group at American City Bank Lonely-James said afterward. I think we are aiming too low!

Wow! Henry looked like he was going to explode. I'm sure that's not going to be the last we hear of that.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 9 (I don't give a crap, so I drink at my desk)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 183 lbs

No promotion!

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is a piece of work. So I have been working for months on Mega Enterprise, really pulled out all the stops to show what I can do and how I totally add value to his team and the whole organization. He made me promise after promises about what he would get for me if I did all this.

So the promos were announced this week. You would never guess that I was totally screwed. Went to see Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir afterward and his attitude sucked. He said that I should be grateful that I have a job in this economic climate and that I should not complain. When I called him on his promises he said that it was his motivation technique to get his staff to "pull one out of the bag". I call that plain old fashioned lying.

I was so pissed I went to see Constantine. I explained the time line, what had been promised and what I had delivered. He nodded in a wise-old-man kind of way. He took a sip of Whiskey and then said "basically, you are fucked". I thought about this for a moment and then realized that this was the first truth that I had been given since I arrived. I thanked him and went and found a bottle of Tequila in my top drawer.

I went back to my day job. I worked hard and diligently. The next day Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir pulled me into a meeting room. He passed me a letter, perhaps more of an ultimatum. I read it. My blood boiled. Basically he has put me on a Performance Improvement Plan. I don't think this was a constructive act, since I think he took a poor view of escalating this to Constantine.

So he records every hour I am working, which makes me laugh since I get in at 8.32am every morning and the scum-bag gets in at 10.45am, claims he has been "on-line" since 6am. Does not seem to be able to answer an IM at that time. I don't have a lunch hour. I often work from home in the evenings and at weekend, but those are not credited. Every hour I'm late with a check-in he writes it down in a Black Moleskin binder.

I went to HR, they said, "You are out of f**king luck". Super. Glad I work at the next big internet story, aka "You are f**ked the first second you walk in".

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 11 (I don't give a crap, so I drink at my desk)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 183 lbs

Its expensive to fix it late!

So there was an Engineering all-hands this week. Constantine took everybody through a bunch of metrics on the cost of bugs in production and having to fix the stuff our customers find. It was mega-scary, it was like an exponential multiplier at each later stage in the process to fix the bug. Wow that gets expensive!

Other places I have worked you hold the release until its ready and then push it. We use a different method here, its Tuesday so we push period. I though this was super agile, until I saw the facts of the cost of fixing bugs rather than holding the release. I get the fact that we have customer commitments, but wouldn't they want the release to be late and working than on time and full of bugs? Now I see that we could have employed a dozen more people (or not let a dozen people go). I see the faults in the process. What we have is bogus despite what the "old-timers" say. That includes Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sire, Stacy and Lonely-James.

I talked to Dave (Chief Architect) afterward and he said "Its sucks, but its so much better than we had a YahBay". I say that's not good enough, we need to be better than everybody if we are to be the next big story. YahBay are dead, Hank Commerce will live long into the shared internet memory.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 179 lbs

Henry has painted his office!

Turns out after a few days of panicking and a multitude of rumors, that Henry is just getting his office painted (again). He wants to match the new Orange Soda look of the destination site. I mean I like the kindergarten look of the color scheme of this place, but that color is directly out of a bottle of Mexican soda. Wow! I can see anymore!

Other rumors this week is that there may be promotions. I have been working on my plan with Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, successful delivery of Mega Enterprise is part of how I get promoted, he says its in the bag. I know there will be no more money, all I really want is the recognition of the effort and commitment I have shown!

I love this company!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 4 (we downed a few after finding Henry's new color scheme)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 179 lbs

Henry's office is empty!

Super crazy, Henry's office has been cleared. OMG, this crazy shit has gone down. The plotters have somehow got Henry removed from his position. That is just astonishing and so quick! What are the board thinking about, clearly not our success.

I personally don't believe the rumors that we will have a new management team here next week. I think things are going too well for us. Henry did send a note last week telling all the deals that are well into contract discussions with all the big banks. He also talked about a strategy to take over the back end for a number of the Fortune 50. It makes no sense to make this sort of change so close to the finish line! Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was in tears (again).

This is out most desperate hour. Help us Henry, you are our only hope!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 7 (we downed a few after finding Henry's office empty)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Super secret meeting!

There is some weird shit going on. An odd collection of managers were taken to one side, and had a meeting with all the executives minus Henry and Arnold the SVP of Sales.

Henry, one of the board directors, basically asked the people "why does Hank Commerce suck". Now, I just heard this from Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, so don't know how much of this is true. What apparently then took place was that everybody started to bitch and moan about how the company was being run, lack of leadership especially by Henry, never making the revenue goals and loosing people on a daily basis.

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said that he was the only one to defend Henry and said that everybody else in the room were traitors for even thinking some of this stuff, and he was going to tell Henry all about it. Apparently Euro-Fool told him stop kissing Henry's ass. I heard from somebody else that they had to be separated again.

I don't know what this means. It could be a bunch of BS or … I bear to think what this could really mean. We have all read Barbarians at the Gate to know what happens, but really Henry must be on a solid foundation especially with the board. There can't possibly be a take-over?

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

We can't test!

So its all going belly up. If I get the rumors right, Mega Enterprise is never going to make it. It basically comes down to this. For every day we test, we add three days onto the end date. If I do the math right, then we will finish the test cycle mid 2010. That's before you add in the re-opend bugs, so that puts us towards the end of 2010.

So we have to help QA. It sucks. Basically every day we get a list of bugs to verify because the lazy pieces of crap in the Applications QA team can't do it, they are "too busy". Sure, I love to make a latte in the morning, but I don't need to make three and then discuss the merits of Amber versus the New Indian Chaat Cafe before I log onto my machine in the morning.I twitter about it instead, that way my friends and colleagues get it on demand.

So I get my list of five bugs assigned each day, we have "testing hour" at noon. I'm there with a bunch of the other engineers not at happy with doing QA's job. As the QA Manager told us, we are "taking one for the team". Sure, I fell better about it already.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 181 lbs

Finger pointing!

It was awesome, I have never seen anything like this before. In the middle of the floor Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir and Euro-Fool were in a ice hockey brawl in-front of everybody. It was so out of control, but very cool to see that raw energy and passion.

Apparently, very unreasonable, Euro-Fool wanted to get a plan of what work was needed to complete Mega Enterprise and which resources were assigned to which tasks. I mean, its so last century to put together a resource plan and then resource level it! We are agile, we don't do that shit! Its the whole point of SCRUM, we do everything in small increments, we adapt as we go along, we don't even need designs because we formulate our ideas as we progress. It does away with all that unnecessary time spent spec writing, reviews, allocating resource and all the stuff in the IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo! handbook. We are not burdened with all the old skool stuff.

Lonely-James tried to inject himself and calm the situation down, but was told to "Fuck off, arm pits". Not very complimentary in my view. Finally Constantine came in and calmed the situation down. I'm not sure that the putting them both in an arm lock was the best idea, but he had to do something, there was going to be murder otherwise.

So I think its a clash of cultures. The ad-hoc "we are agile and we know best, trust us" versus the "old school plan, plan, plan and TPS reports".

The empire may have struck back, but Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so got one over Euro-Fool!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

Margarita blend off!

It was the dope man. I mean, the company went crazy for it, it was just like spring break in 2003 with my frat pals on Miami beach. Crazy, crazy time.

Most of HR was either rift'ed or quit, so one of the recruiters has been running the show. Old-Dude-In-HR-That's-Cool seem pretty savvy. So somehow he got Henry to sign off on a Margarita blend off.

Our team had practiced for weeks on various combinations, developing our simple syrups and infusions. Boy, we got so out of our minds most nights trying to get the perfect mix. Finally it was the afternoon of the event. There were a whole bunch of stands, costumes and more liquor than a Patricks Day parade!

We called ours the "Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir-But-Make-It-A-Margarita-Margarita". It was the bomb. It was so strong that we limited everybody to two cups only. We were assured of victory.

Henry was there with the rest of his H-Staff, he looked great after his two week vacation in the Bahamas, all bronzed and relaxed. Wish he could have changed out of the flip flops though.

First up in front of the judges was Euro-Fools team. Man, he is so full of it and made the worst mistake. It wasn't even a Margarita the dumb ass. We went on about hand crafted, bla-bla-bla. Who gives man! It was some sort of rum punch, I had some it sucked!

Then the Mexican-Wrestles came up from the Applications team. I was scared, they looked like left overs from Gay Pride, weird. Theres was pretty good, but too fruity for me.

Then there was a bunch of marketing people, they talked a lot but their drink lacked any substance. Looked nice though. A couple of the Ops team had something that looked like a roadkill and probably was.

Last up, and this was Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir's master stroke was our team. He gave an very motivating speech, something about his humble upbringing and how it owes everything to Henry but he's sorry about this pictures he took of Henry and that Russian, err "Model". It was moving.

By this time, H-Staff were wasted. They handed over the score cards to Henry's "assistant". Some time past. Then some more time passed. More drinks were had. Then finally, the results came through. It had been a pretty tough task to add up all those numbers, but she had done it.

It was shocking, you could hear the sharp intake of breath. Euro-Fool had won, and it hadn't even been a f**king Margarita! Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was pissed and got in it face to face with Henry. Next thing I hear is the sound of breaking glass and blood everywhere. It not clear what had happened. Some say Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir swung at Henry and missed, others say that Beam-Me-Up was so drunk he just fell through the window. All I know is that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir grabbed his helmet and hit the road.

It was a shocking end to an amazing day!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!))
Shots : 16 (it was the blend off)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 183 lbs

OMG!

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed. Like I mean really pissed. So pissed that he missed his beloved bocce games all week. All of Constantine's staff have been locked up in a meeting room for hours at a time with various graphs and charts being projected. There were in the conference room next to my desk so I got to watch in real time, mega cool.

Constantine did not look happy as Lonely-James waved his sweaty armpits around. I could not understand what the F**k the charts meant and I'm working on Mega Enterprise. After Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir calmed down a little, apparently the QA testing and bug rates are all to shit and there is no way they are going to make the 1-July release date. All the stuff for American City Bank that has priority, Stacy also wants to get the iPhone Server part released and all sorts of other shit. Pity the client is another 6 months out.

So if Mega Enterprise slips, then it slips into September. The release process is a F**king zoo, with just about every other project (or animal in this case) ready to eat your hind.

Apparently the QA team are always "two weeks away" from having an answer to the basic question of what does your plan look like to execute the test plan. Like, dude that's a bit late in the cycle to be working out that shit! I mean, QA they are like a total waste of time, especially in the Applications team. I want to go up to Constantine and just tell him to "Trust Me". We are so part of the team that if the shit does hit that fan, we will be on it like a flash, debugging and hacking away at production to make this beast live!

Apparently, Henry promised this to the board, so he it totally f**ked.

We have a new rule, after 5.26pm you can drink at work, as long as you don't even look at keyboard. If Henry does not like that, then f**k him and his moccasins.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!))
Shots : 6 (I think I'm sacked (again)!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

Reading circle!

One of the other teams started a reading circle. Its pretty crazy. I think the dude who runs it is a Zen Buddhist or something, but basically on the 1st of the month a book get posted on the Twiki. We then have three weeks to read it and on the fourth week we all meet to discuss. Awesome I thought, plus I saw Geek-Babe had signed up.

This is when it got a bit weird. We all went up to the boardroom, there were candles and incense burning, we all held hands and chanted for like about 20 minutes. Then for the next three hours we had a shouting match on the pros and cons of the book in question. Man it was intense, people calling each other mother this and mother that, shouting at each other, throwing the books across the room. It was like telling a Republican that its all their fault the banking sector just cut its own throat! Franks-Mom tried to keep things in order, but it was crazy!

At the end, Zen-Dude got everybody together again and we all chanted for 10 minutes, we all hugged and then Zen-Dude pulled out the largest bottle of tequila. Technically I think that means we are all now sacked after we finished every last drop.

The book? Tracy Kidder's Soul of a new machine. Man, I almost cried in the chapter about the missing NAND gate, its was like my Spring nightmare all over again, I could not help the emotion and horror of it all.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!))
Shots : 8 (I think I'm sacked!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Death by twitter part 2!

So New-Marketing-Veep was the next to go. Well how could he stay after his new strategy to attract the 17-35 audience had gone up in smoke after it was leaked on Twitter by his own team. I know what Henry means when he says that you have to love Hank Commerce. Love means that you have to do the right thing by the brand, by the company and by Henry. So another one bites the dust. No tears for this one.

Henry has been hanging at the office more. We had a beer bash this week, not sure why, but he really got into the details. It was a shame that it was not about how we were going to broaden our appeal or get more revenue. But it was super interesting to hear how he thinks its the best time to get a steal on an Aston Martin DBS. He explained it was all about the leverage of cash versus credit in a time where cash is king, demand is low and time is infinite. Not sure about the beige on beige color scheme, seems all a bit Roger Moore.

Demo'ed my ad placement service to Lonely-James and his team this week. I was distracted from the feedback I was being given as I watched the sweat stains grow at a crazy rate. I'll have to see if anybody took notes, I certainly did not.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 7 (beer bash returns!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 178 lbs

Death by twitter!

It was so lame. I've been attending the daily stand ups that Euro-Fool has been running for "Mega Enterprise". Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir has been going crazy because Constantine put Euro-Fool in command rather then him. So he attended for a while and then stopped showing up. Euro-Fool, I guess, then got Constantine all riled up to shout at Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so he started showing up again. Now I'm his delegate. The only cool thing in this sorry story is the Geek-Babe attends, which is very cool, so I hang out with her for 27 minutes each day.

The idea is that its cross functional, so along with Product Management, Program Management, Eng & QA there is also Marketing. Henry has said that "Mega Enterprise" is going to be key for contributing to the bottom line because we are in control and don't have to chew the costs and late launch that we do with American City Bank. The trouble is that Marketing are a little weird. First they dress weird (how do you say "Gay!"), they talk weird (its all about positioning, drone, drone, drone) and they also cannot keep their mouths shut.

Henry says that "Mega Enterprise" has to be kept secret so that we can make a huge splash and totally change the market. So what does Fresh-New-Marketing-Dude do? He starts twittering about it to start some "buzz".

Henry went ballistic, well that's what at least Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir told me. So our cover has been broken and everybody in the industry knows about it. There was some chatter on Techbyte but Henry got M.Arrington to take down the post and the comments. Their kids go to school with each other and M.Arrington owed Henry after the incident at the school with the new first grade teacher. Apparently she was not as cute as BayGossip claimed.

So Fresh-New-Marketing-Dude is trying his luck at another company, Henry fired his ass right out to left field in a matter of seconds of finding out. Well, in fact the twittering had been going on for weeks, but Henry does not Twitter so it took his assistant to blog about it before he was in the loop.

Sad. Nice guy. Bad taste in dress shirts.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

I had my first HoMO!

It was so totally awesome that I can hardly speak, or at least now speak in a octave or two higher than normal. It just took my breath away.

So to recap, HoMo or the Hank Orthogonal Modus Operandi is the process we use to make sure what gets pushed into production is super cool, scalable and the Ops guys will not shoot you for it. If you do what you are told its a rubber stamp, try and be creative and Dave (our Chief Architect) and the Ops team come after you.

So I have been working on "Mega Enterprise". Its going to be pretty sweet. My feature for this is to ensure that whatever device you use, IE6, a Blackberry 62xx etc. allows you to log on, go through the authorization process and then drop a targeted Ad. Its super sweet, it means that we will totally get a bunch of money from Advertisers falling over themselves to be the first thing our target users will see. We aim to be the destination site for 17-34 year olds, something that Facebook can only be dreaming of.

The architecture was pretty sweet, I designed it to deal with 10M impression a minute, since that's Dave's design goal for the site. He was saying that if we don't get that visitor rate then "Its not worth getting out of bed for". I totally get that. So I used a Spring container, with lazy consistency a bit like CouchDB or Amazon Dynamo. I wrapped that up in the implementation so I don't scare everybody, but its fast and will scale horizontally on commodity hardware, non of that proprietary Sun hardware .

So I got my rubber from my HoMo. I'm very happy.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 178 lbs

American City Bank delays again!

This delay is totally our fault. They came to do an audit and it appears that we store some of their data in plain text, I don't know all the details but apparently Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was supposed to build out some components that only partially got completed. When I say partially, I mean it was a basic pass through.

Long and short if it, he spend many hours with Constantine and Henry this week. I think Constantine is at the end of this rod with him. I also sawhim and Euro-Fool plotting, they always seem to go to another floor and then draw on whiteboards that can't be seen from the outside which are always clean (I checked).

I get the feeling that something big is going to happen again. It upsets me, since we have trying to pull it together since the layoffs. Why does the management team hate Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir? He is the only true leader here.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 179 lbs

Guns on release night!

So I had my first release night, it was a pretty awesome experience. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir asked me to fill in, he wanted a night off.

So we gathered in the board room, its full of Aeron chairs, its a pretty sweet set up. On the projector they were displaying the Flight Plan for the night work. Down one side the Operations team were all positioned. Apparently DJ likes them in order of seniority. The Scary-Ops-Guy was leading the charge, playing AC/DC on his MacBook Pro. Apart from that the only thing you could here was the sound of fingers on keyboards. I broke the silence to make a joke but was told to "Shut the F**k up". I thought they had some sort of Vulcan mind-melt since there was no talking, but I was told that they use IRC. I laughed at that, boy we should all go day to 28k dial-up and AOL, like that's dinosaur technology!

You don't mess with the Ops guys. Scary-Ops-Guy was actually in Desert Storm and is a leading light in the "Open Carry" movement in the Bay Area. Its all about the right to carry arms and all the NRA horse shit, but I did not like to make that point sitting opposite a guy with a Magnum in a un-clipped holster.As I understand it, the guns are not supposed to be loaded, but I was not going to push my luck and find out.

The only project manager left is a huge NRA fan, he screen saver is actually an AK47 or something. He was thumbing through the Flight Plan so I figured I better leave him alone as well.

Things started well, but the food was late. Can you believe that these guys get food, no wonder Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir always is here for release night! They had a really nice pizza from "I Love Charlotte, NC". It came with deep fried pickles and grits on the side. Yummy.

After one of the DBA trashed the production database and the DBA team spent the first hour trying to recover the database, things went pretty smoothly. Funny, they were super quite until Scary-Ops-Guy asked "What the F**k are you guys so busy with"... then the shit hit the fan.

Our code went out smooth, as I'm told by Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir always happens. Roll on the next release night!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 1 nights (pizza on release night!)
Weight : 177 lbs

American City Bank does not go live!

Wow. Crazy few weeks. Everybody has been focusing on making the American City Bank launch successful. Lots of late nights, a whole team baby sitting the call each day and managing their issues. Lots of bugs, lots of missing requirements. I have a friend working on the code, sounds like they are writing it as they go along, nobody seems to have a clue how the API contracts should work. They are nailed down in terms of XML, but not the behaviors. I mean, how COBOL is that? They all sound like a bunch of old guys in some brown walled, nondescript office in Delaware. The peons don't work in the high end Manhattan office!

Finally American City Bank called off the launch. Apparently, they have some deal with their staff that they don't launch a product in a month with a Friday 13th, so we have to push out the launch past Feb.

Was looking forward to the mind bending party that Henry had promised. He said he would take "only the engineers" to Gary Danko in SF, this was later downgraded to PF Chang's in Palo Alto, which to be honest I super happy about. Who does not love PF Chang!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 176 lbs

Moonlighting!

Ops guys are weird at the best of times. They work strange hours, act weird and have a big interest in guns. Generally you should not mess with them, especially if its open carry week.

So I'm not surprised that DJ ever question the fact that one of his guys volunteered for night shift work. Its kind of easy, since there are not customer to piss off if you take out a server or database and sometimes pull a wire on the wrong switch. Its all scheduled so the customer have low expectations. Somebody has even written a script that you can cut & paste from.

But then there's the rub. Dude was actually working for a competitor, some outfit in Dallas during the day and then doing work for us during the night. He was getting double pay for doing the same thing twice. Explains why you never got on answer on the pager when he was on duty, always claimed to be sleeping. We all heard Henry screaming down here in the dungeons all the way from the Management Tower.

Super dumb for DJ letting this slide. But then something super crazy happened. They kept him on and doubled his pay, the theory was that the company could not cut is wages because he was in too deep with the Chinese Mafia. Cutting his wage was like giving him a death sentence and that is totally bad karma. So dude is still here and making more money than ever! Whoever said Henry is not a humanitarian is on crack.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

Awesome open house!

Henry gave the killer of all killer speeches today. Since we have a hiring gap and the resumes are thin on the ground we decide to have an open house! So I dragged a few close friends in, did not invite everybody since there are only some I want to share the bonanza with when we go IPO!

Henry gave the whole soup-to-nuts of the boom and bust in 1999-2001. It was a great history lesson for me, I had not even started college then. He explained the core values of our employees, shown by the determination to beat off junkies, hookers and debt collectors in those first days in rented loft in SOMA. The pictures looked awesome. Then came the whole twin towers thing and Henry was so depressed that he could not visit NYC for months.

Then he explained how the Republican's will have the answer, they always do in a financial crisis and that the Democrats will mess it up if they win the election in the fall. They don't seem to have a chance, the washed up first wife of a disgraced president and a black guy who's name sounds like he's a terrorist.

He wrapped it up with a rally call that now is the time to put money to work, to invest and make something amazing. The people all stood and gave him a standing ovation, it was awesome.

Lots of great people to talk with but lots of interviewing to do.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

We hiring!

Super cool, news came down that we can hire back the spots vacated by those rats who jumped ship. Thank god for Henry, that's such a smart move. We just can't make our commitments with a bunch less people.

So the hiring machine starts up again, they let most of the recruiting team go in the Rift so its going to be a bunch of hard work for them, but they seem to be hyped up to do it.

I'm having trouble with coming up with a reasonable way to talk about the fact that we rift'ed a bunch of people then a few months later we are hiring again. Its sounds pretty weird. The drop in cash is tough to talk about since they seem to be making offers at the old rate. Sure, we did get extra stock to make up for the pay cut, but like that's not going to pay for the rent dude.

Here's what I have so far

• Henry is awesome, he's like the cool Pop you never had
• We have customers and are making some money
• If the economy turns around, we are going to make a pile of cash fast!
• The pay sucks, but the mission is so worthwhile
  
• You get to work with cool people, even the managers are pretty smart
  

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

New branding strategy!

We've had a bunch of Marketing VPs. Henry seems to have a tough time with people that don't share his vision or who are clearly smarter than he is, especially when it comes to those creative types.

New-Maketing-Veep seem cool, gave his pitch at the company meeting this week in a Hawaii-meets-JCrew-via-Target look. Drives a Subaru so is at least "real", not one of the Porsche "look at me" asses.

The pitch is this. Hank Commerce sounds very grown up and mature, it appeals to large customers in the focus groups they have been doing. One of the questions asked "Would you buy a used car from Hank Commerce?" and 97% of respondents said "Yes". However, for the younger hipper, Web 3.0 savvy crowd, Hank Commerce sounds like some where your parents buy their elasticated pants from.

So we are freshening up, we go from Hank Green (™) to Hank Orange Soda (™) and a new destination site call "ranK". Somebody asked if the script used was Hindi or something, but it looks pretty cool. They showed some mocks on billboards, in the American Airlines in-flight magazine (first class not coach class) and three banners hanging in an airport. That was awesome to see with just with the capitalization showing. Very cool.

They want to launch this new destination site by the middle of the year, trying to target the kids who are replacing the baby boomers and who are web savvy. Its going to be rolled into the "Mega Enterprise" product, its going to be sweet!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 178 lbs

Ethics training!

Wow, its feels so big company that we have ethics training. Apparently some manager was working outside the framework laid down by HR. So to keep us in compliance and to make sure we don't get any complications (e.g. law suits) we have mandatory training.

Turns out that a manager, who they would not name, was coercing his staff in ways which were totally illegal. What an idiot! Why would you put the company at that much risk? Crazy.

So we have to do the self paced web training, answer the questions and we can print a certificate at the end. A waste of my time, could be fixing bugs but if that's what we have to do… It also come with poster on every wall, its a sort of Manga meets Sponge Bob mash up with the slogan "When it doubt, do the right thing". The summary of the poster is that if you see something that you think is wrong then be a whistle blower and tell HR. I can see how this could all go very wrong. The old guys in Ops were playing totally old school hip-hop when they saw the posters, apparently is something to do with some famous movie from the 80's. Weird, I don't remember any Hip-Hop in Flashdance.

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir has changed up the pager selection process again, we are back to the take-it-in-turns model. Works for me, can book that weekend in Tahoe now! The powder is mega deep at the moment.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 179 lbs

I suck at chili eating!

There's a weird tradition in my team. But its cool as well.

We always have somebody on call from our team, we are the core and fabric of the system so we always need to be there. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir trusts me to do this now, which is awesome.

We used to do it on rotation, everybody got their turn in order, you know where you are from week to week and so could plan. Big Bill, the Database expert in the team, super techie and has the biggest Afro, came up with a cool idea.

Basically at the team meeting each week, we select who's going to have the pager but eating Chili's. Awesome, its like being back at my frat house all over again!

So he lines up three paper cups and lids. He places a pile of chilies in one, and the other two are left empty. He them shuffles them around the table like one of those side walk games. I don't know if you have every seen one of those, but its a complete hoax. They have somebody in the crowd who gets to win, just to get the everybody else interested. Then they shuffle the cards or shells in such a way that you always loose. You would have to be stupid to get suckered into that.

So back to our selection mechanism. Basically you get to choose a cup, if its empty then you don't have to take the pager. Big Bill shuffles for each team member. Weird that I have been selected and then had to eat the chilies three weeks in the row. My bad luck I guess.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

The rats are leaving!

I don't get it. I had to grab Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir and pour my heart out. I mean Henry has an amazing vision, we are pulling in large and small customers, despite the economy and we are executing against the plan.

So why are some many people leaving us? It makes no sense. I understand that the layoffs were tough and we all lost somebody we knew or saw when we were making our latte's in the morning. But its a constant stream and they are some of the top of the tree engineers, people I hope to become one day.

I hear the same excuses, been here 3 years and burnt out, need stability, need a new challenge etc. It cuts me to the bone that they could turn their backs on the team but mostly turning their backs on Henry. He's amazing and does not deserve that and needs our support!

I think the company line is that they are all pissed at the pay cut and could not be bought off with a little more stock. I mean, I got stock as well, but they don't start vesting for 18 months, Henry said that the board would not approve a faster vesting schedule. But I mean, when we go IPO as Henry is still talking about, stock is going to be better than cash!

So let them leave, it means my stock gets to vest and there's does not and when we go IPO I will be laughing all the way to PF Changs baby!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Mega Enterprise!

After the disappointment of the Shopping Cart being canned I was switched to the "Mega Enterprise" initiative. Basically what we are doing is slim down the product to focus on the Mega Enterprises, you know the Morgan Stanley, GE, Countrywide Financial etc. Its a bit like Salesforce, not everybody needs all that complexity and customization. We slim down what we have to appeal to parts of their business and then grow from within. Trojan horse on steroids. Makes sense, lets sell what we have rather than build what we don't need.

So I'm actually working for the platform team and for Euro-Fool. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is super suspicious since he is the enemy, but a few weeks here and I have found they are a decent bunch. They have a social every Friday, bread, cheese, roasted garlic etc. They used to do wine before prohibition started.

Not a single American in the team, but will not hold that against them.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 181 lbs

The shopping cart has been canned!

What a crap week. For months I have been working on this son-of-a-gun feature. Late nights, then without dinner and now without drinks. Dealing with the changes from the HaHa, two weeks to deploy and then the QA bugs right up to the day before the release lockdown.

But i made it.

Too f**king late for me. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir came back from a meeting with Constantine. Apparently American City Bank are going with their existing vendor for the shopping store and since there is little or no IP in shopping we are switching to Google. That's what I f**king said to Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir before I started! There was never any IP in this and the Applications teams were way behind schedule (no change there). Why was I killing myself? Oh because Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir insisted that the architecture changes get done now and pushed into production ASAP. F**king moron.

Next week I'm going to the store to get a can of tartan paint...

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

Beam me up scotty!

Its been an exciting week. I finally got my code out of development and into the hands of QA. The HaHa gave me some serious re-work to make sure that Ops would sign off on the design. I was also super lucky that Dave did not make me go through the new HoMo process, but I'm looking forward to my first one of those.

So basic sanity testing is done, mocked up all the backend external interfaces so that QA can inject the bad and the good. Provided a front end mock for the Applications teams so they can build without the need for having the whole software stack. All looking sweet. All very test driven development, all very agile.

Next step was to get Engineering Services to deploy to a QA environment in the lab. Mother-of-Jesus what an episode that turned out to be and we are still not finished.

Here's what I had to do. A few months ago I had to submit an email which Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir approved. This then got translated onto a cocktail napkin (I'm not joking). This was then pinned to the wall in some sort of timeline sequence, an agile planning wall so to speak. I'm not sure what happens when they reach the end of the wall, they must wrap around or go back to the beginning or something.

Then, I had to attend another daily standup with what's left of PMO. Each day I had to say the following, "Yes, I'm on track and still need the environment". It would have been easier to tell them when I was not on track, but they guy who runs the team wants to "look you in the eye".

Then it came to the day-of-deployment. This basically meant hanging around all day with the services guys. The head guy, known as Beam-Me-Up banged away at his ASUS all day, swearing a lot and then shouting for another Diet Dr. Pepper. I did not like to ask what was going on, but basically if I attempted to get up he said "Leave and I fucking nuke this environment". I mean dude, chill out!

That was three days ago. I'm still at his desk, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed, he thinks he could have deployed in seconds. I mean that guys is the bomb, I'm sure he could have done it in at least 30 minutes. Its been whack-a-mole, fix one thing and it breaks another. Beam-Me-Up says this is normal.

If I don't get the environment I may loose my QA team and miss the release window. If that happens, then I may not get to deliver this side of Memorial Day, the schedule is backed up with American City Bank work. F**k me, this shit is hard!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 184 lbs

You have to be cool to get it!

I was at a car dealer this weekend, my jalopy was never going to make it through another year, and now that I have a little extra cash I figured it was time to get a bargain with the downturn and all.

Swung by the VW dealer, basically the sales guy had his head stuck up his ass. Wanted to totally kill me on the interest rates and would not budge from the MRSP. So went to Scion dealer. Super sweet. First there was this cool Asian babe of a salesperson. Super helpful, knew the cars and what the deals were. Laid down the options and costs and bam! I was driving away in a Scion xB in flat olive green with a World War 2 US Army markings. Major deal and a sweet ride. I think Geek Babe will totally check me out in this ride!

Henry told a similar story this week at the company meeting. He said the critical thing is to sell our platform to the right people. He's turning down deals because they would take the company in the wrong direction in his view. He's also doing the same with American City Bank, they need to have features that we can sell again and again even if they paid for them. Totally makes sense, write once, sell many.

So lets turn down deals and the cash they bring and focus on those deals that will make Hank Commerce the next big internet story.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 185 lbs

No more drinking!

Henry dropped a bomb shell this week. We will all be in shock for sometime, especially Constantine and the management team. Henry basically said that if anybody drinks on site or has drunk and then connects to a production system they will be marched out, no severance, no anything. It was pretty harsh and I think we all got that he was serious when he said "I'm f**king serious guys, I love you all, but no f**king drinking". Henry has to be one of the biggest drinkers on the exec team, but if he said if he can do it then anybody can. I love that "can-do" spirit.

A couple of us went through the drawers, refrigerators and in the stock room to see the acres of beer, wine, scotch, tequila and Bourbon all being boxed up by the security team.

The rumors has it that it all went down after American City Bank came for a pre-launch visit. They had all the regular glad-handing that goes on, everybody was dressed up (i.e. no holes in jeans) and had showered that day. Nobody had told the Platform team who had a marathon drinking session during the day. Erik, one of the super tech leads on that team, had lost a bet that he could drink a dozen shots of tequila in an hour and keep his lunch down. He looked green, but had kept his Una Mass down, until he made it to the elevator.

The trouble was that he held the elevator for the American City Bank team and Henry. They were going to PK Changs that night in Palo Alto. Henry was trying to ignore Erik, who then said "You're those f**kers from American Shitty Bank" (we was slurring) and then threw up his Una Mass all over them.

The retribution has been pretty horrible. I think Henry thinks we don't work hard enough. No doubt that American City Bank gave him shit as well. So we all will suffer. Thanks Erik!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

HaHA gets renamed HoMo!

Did not mention that we have a new corporate architect, Dave. He's been pretty quite since he started in October. He turns up at meetings, design reviews etc. and says nothing. He then goes back to his desk, pulls a diet 7 Up and then writes more Twiki pages (we are so old school, we don't even use Media Wiki).

This week, he presented at the Tech-Sess. The presentation was called "Why we are changing from HaHa to HoMo and make more millions". HaHa is our review process, the Hank Architecture Holistic Assessment.

It certainly drew a big audience, even Lucy from recruiting was there. Dave's big idea was that the HaHA needs to be less democratic, we need to basically rubber stamp patterns that Ops feel they can deploy + support and stop engineers f**king up with some new crazy architecture or deployment requirement, like reliable messaging. The first step on this long process is to rename HaHa to HoMo, or the Hank Orthogonal Modus Operandi.

Like what gives dude? I get the principal, but do you really think that just changing the name is going to make that huge a difference? I know that Henry always had a master plan for the naming of the company and that Hank Commerce was the final destination after visiting MyScrewdriver and TARDIS Corp. Apparently we have been in a law suite for years with the BBC over that last name.

So HoMo is the name, the process is new and the outcomes will be different, so says Dave. I'm looking forward to my first HoMo.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 6 (down 4 from last week)
Shots : 20 (up 4 from last week)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

Scritable systems sucks!

I love how we are changing the world, one customer at a time. But our platform is so friggin' tough to develop and then debug. I mean I love XML and XML Spy, you can do some wicked smart things. But developing an MVC application in XML, its pretty mind bending. The idea, and its pretty cool idea, is that we become a Platform As A Service. Something that Salesforce think they are doing, in reality they have just moved Oracle CRM onto the web and have a bunch of forms that allow you to customize it. Admittedly, its over the web which beats any Oracle technology by four or more years due to their release cycle. But its not as cool as the platform we are building, we call it "SkyNet" after the Terminator movies. We are that cool!

Here's what we are going to do, and its a killer plan. We are opening up the Platform for anybody to build any application. To demo this, a couple of the Product Managers built a Dinner Outsourcing Application (DOA), which allows you to pre-configure your selection for dinner, it then aggregates the days results and with the trends of the previous days, week and months then placed the order with the vendor (over Fax). Soemtimes it even gets the order right, but mostly orders pizza. It can then use the aggregation algorithms to either try a leveraged buy-out of the franchise we buy from most frequently or try to get a corporate rate established though Book-a-Table.

The application is wicked smart and they built in a couple of days. And they are Product Managers! Pity that during the time it took to develop, Henry stopped all the dinner orders. It could have been wicked cool application on our destination site. I think our engineers would have loved it.

So the plan is that anybody can build an application that can leverage our aggregation and broad range of services to create their own mash up. I'm thinking about building an application to examine the costs of flights between New York and Charlotte, NC and San Francisco and then recommend when Henry should travel. Its kiss ass, but he really needs to know who I am!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 10 (up 2 from last week)
Shots : 16 (up 6 from last week)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs