Mark Shead – Page 43 – Technical Agile Coach and Trainer

How to Fire a Headhunter

A programmer was working with a headhunter who misrepresented him to some potential clients. He asked the Slashdot crowd if and how he should fire the guy. The best response:

In my experience, headhunters are very forthright about their desire to kill people, eat them, and hang their shrunken, stuffed heads from strings around their neck. Obviously, you should fire them if they look overly hungry and there is no one else for them to eat. Or if they catch and eat people other than those you hired them to catch and eat. Employed with care and attention, though, headhunters can bring something to your business that no other employee can: abject terror in those that oppose you.

How to keep Hitler from reading your email

Email encryption is readily available, but not many people use it.

Many of the processes that currently require printing on dead trees and then using fossil fuels to transport sheets of paper through the mail could be done electronically if more people would use encryption.

via Digital Signatures & Encryption : Productivity501.

Mind Shower

From the Wikipedia page on Brainstorming:

Some governmental organisations (The Welsh Development Agency and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast) have reached the conclusion that the term ‘brainstorming’ is offensive to people with epilepsy. Some organisations have suggested the alternative “mind shower”. However, research by the National Society for Epilepsy found of those affected by epilepsy questioned, 93% found the term inoffensive. Some resented the term “mind shower” because of the suggestion that people with epilepsy were, as a group, easily offended.

Panama Canal

I just finished watching a NOVA show on the Panama canal. It was very fascinating. A few things of interest:

A private corporation in France started building the canal in 1881, but collapsed. It was the biggest financial collapse up to that point in time.
Approximately 22,000 people died while working there for the French corporation–primarily from malaria.
Malaria was thought to come from the mist in the area and from rotting vegetation. Doctors advised people not to breath the night air to avoid getting sick.
The hospital during the French effort protected their lawn plants with a ring of water–which of course was a perfect mosquito breeding pool.
When the US efforts started in 1904, there was a much better understanding of malaria and the disease was pretty much eradicated from the area.
The locks don’t operate using gravity so pumps are not needed in their operation.
The rainforests in the area fill a large lake that covers most of the distance between the two coasts. The locks have to raise and lower the ships to the level of this lake.
Moving a ship through the Panama Canal requires the release of around 52 million gallons of water from the lake to the ocean. This lake is replenished by the rain forest drainage.

The Socialist

Overheard about a mutual acquaintance:

He has pretty socialistic leanings–although they aren’t quite as strong as they were before he made a million dollars.