Mailbox Management

Today a colleague of mine (let's call him Sleepy) was charged to drop an email to the entire 'team' to optimise our electronic communication tool in order to attain synergies so that we can deliver better value add to the client and empower ourselves. During the course of drafting the mail, he asked me to add my two cents - no fuck it I am an Indian - my two rupees to the beautiful parody he had come up with. Together we came up with this baby:

"Hi Team,

As per my discussion with XXX, we need to maintain an organised mail box.

Since our communication is pre-dominantly done via e-mail, it is extremely necessary to be able to track emails related to projects, without expending time and avoiding the search tool.

We are the managers of our own outbox so it is obviously customised to our own convenience. However, here are some pointers which might prove helpful:

• There is no limit in the number of folders one can create. Make the most of this and store all mails related to a project in one created folder. Use this option intelligently, be judicious and innovative.
• Store the ‘Sent Items’ in the folder of the related project. We generally tend to overlook our sent mail.
• Client mails are extremely important. Do not delete any client mail, however irrelevant or trivial it may seem.
• Block unnecessary mails. Eg: If you do not use the cab service, you can block the daily mails from XXX Transport.

Hope you find this useful.

I can come and test your mailbox management anytime, so stay prepared for an impromptu visit from me.

Feel free to make suggestions to improve our mailbox management.

Remember – Do it “RIGHT FIRST TIME” and “GET THINGS DONE”. Thanks and regards, Sleepy"
Most of the perversions are Sleepy's brainchildren. I merely spiced things up just a tiny little bit. Muhuhuhuhaahaahaaaa

oh! oH! OH!

Consider the picture. What do you thing is packaged in this? A sex toy? A condom? Something wilder? Well.... Tada!!

These Chinese people sure know how to market to various market segments simultaneously. Kudos.

Follow up to RIGHT FIRST TIME

This I had to post. After the life changing experience with RIGHT FIRST TIME (patent pending). The managers at my organisation came up with another blockbuster. GET THINGS DONE! (patent pending here as well). What is this path breaking paradigm? See for yourself. I am too over-awed to be sarcastic right now.

"Hi Team,

This is in continuation to XXX's mail about being RIGHT FIRST TIME (patent pending). I would like to add another dimension to it which is GET THINGS DONE (patent pending here as well).

I have been noticing this for quite some days now and would like all of you to follow this for each and every task you perform or someone asks you to do.

Be it a simple task like follow-up on a client mail, getting something installed on your PC, getting approvals, please ensure that you take complete ownership of the task and get it done.

Please do not wait for the person who has asked you to do the task to follow up again and again but be proactive and communicate with him/her if you are facing any bottlenecks. If you see any task is not being done properly by the project team/corporate team (IT/Admin/Transport/Finance/HR)/or even the client, please make it a point to raise it with your manager or in an appropriate forum.

This will also reduce the risk of any small issue turning into a potential fire. Be assured that this will help in developing your skill set and people will start looking up to you as a trusted team member.

If you have any queries/suggestions, please feel free to talk to me.

REMEMBER - Do not be reactive be proactive.

Thanks and best regards,
Manager"

And hey pssst... See that punchline? The one about reactive and proactive. Your's truly suggested that. Muhuhuhaahaahaaaaa I feel so like laughing an evil laugh. Damn you micromanagers. May you go to manager's hell.

Lacuna

What have I become,
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know,
Goes away in the end.
You could have it all,
My empire of dirt.
I would let you down,
I will make you hurt.
If I could start again,
A million miles away.
I would keep myself.
I would find a way.


Hurt - By nine inch nails. Not mine. Not mine. Not mine......

Half-hearted rebels

I was having this conversation with a colleague (sleepy) over a coffee break. The fateful day being a Friday, the casual day at my company, the guy was in his *nearly standard* casuals and I was in my *on protest* formals (to know more about the on protest clothing, read this post and this post). He was telling a story, an office story of course, it went like this:

"Listen to this dude. I was chilling on my seat in the morning. Just then the AVP (assitant vice president of the company we work for) messaged me on my IM. He wanted to see me for some stupid thing and called me to his cabin. So I sort of thought should I tuck my t-shirt in? I said fuck it. Then I thought should I let my ID card dangle around my neck? I said fuck that too. Then I wondered if I should worry about my suede leather shoes (which are not allowed on casual Fridays.. yeah I know). Then I said fuck that too and I went to the AVP just like that"

After this story, once we'd rejoiced over how we stick it to the system, he said something a'la Irvine Welsh or Philip K. Dick. He said, "You know dude, we are like half hearted rebels. We can never do what we really want just fantasize about it and take joy in these puny pseudo-victories". We'd talk about how we are meant for something grander than the routine bullshit. But we know that we'd never amount to anything. Just a footnote in a book of footnotes. We may deny this. We may say that this is negative point of view. We may say that things come to those who work for it. That we are waiting for the right opportunity... the truth is that when we die, the world won't even hear a whisper, our close ones will mourn for a while, our friends might feel a little sad for a while and there might be an anonymous obituary in an anonymous news paper. To quote one of my current favorite authors -

"I resemble that worm which crawls through dust,
Lives in dust, eats dust
Until a passerby's foot crushes it."

PS: I just noticed it. Half a heart looks just like a monkey's arse.

T-Shirts, Busts, Dirty looks

I can't help it. I generally have to read - everything!

Message t-shirts are a rage. It seems everyone has something to say. Or wants to be seen saying something. Now as India is a sexually liberal country where we treat our women with great respect *smirk*, girls too wear message t-shirts. By now you must have guessed what I'm getting at. If you are super slow, then let me say it plain. I can't help but read the messages on the t-shirts the women are wearing and as it happens, the message is located at a strategic location of the female anatomy. As the wearer sees me staring, they draw their own conclusions and give me such absolutely dirty looks! I swear someday I'll get my arse kicked. phbbbt.

Image copyright of whoever holds it. It's not mine!

Bow down before the one you serve

Need I say anything?

Photo courtesy Hindustan Times (10 July)

Make the pledge

Walmart has launched a site for people to take the pledge to 'not reveal the ending of Harry Potter'. All for the noble cause of revenue fortification. Bah!

To take the pledge go to http://www.makethepledge.net/

Mostly Harmless - 10 July 2007

Govt mulls 'licence fee' on every colour TV
Television viewing could soon be a more expensive affair. The government is considering imposing a recurring annual 'licence fee' of Rs 500 for each colour television set, and Rs 200 for a black & white TV, owned by consumers as a bailout measure for the cash-strapped Prasar Bharati.

What is going on? The return of License Raj? The 500/month is not so much trouble but the potential of run-ins with Babus is scary!

Stray peacock beaten by man

A peacock that roamed into a fast-food restaurant parking lot was attacked by a man who claimed the bird was a vampire, animal-control authorities said.

Elephant beats keeper for late meals
"When Suzi is not fed on time it holds its master's cane in its trunk and starts beating him," an official at the zoo in the city of Lahore said.

Guest finds host's wife, son in freezer
A Belgian man appeared in court on Friday after a woman at his dinner party found the bodies of his wife and stepson in the freezer as she put away the leftovers, prosecutors said.

The woman also alleged that the host was giving her the cold shoulder throughout the party.

After recess, trivial PILs flood SC
The petition wanted India rechristened 'Hindustan', another wanted the Arabian Sea renamed 'Sindhu Sagar' and yet another petitioner read out a self-composed alternative to the national anthem and demanded that 'Jana Gana Mana' be discarded as it was a "eulogy" to British monarch George V.

After protest, mudslinging in Rajkot
Congress, on the other hand, supported Pooja and burnt chief minister Narendra Modi's effigy. They also blamed police for not handling Pooja's case properly. A state-level delegation of the women's wing of Congress visited the city and met Pooja's parents and in-laws on Sunday.

Seriously if the congress could burn Effigies of Modi when their drain pipe is blocked, it would.

Casual remarks on plane land 3 execs in trouble with cops
In the current security scare situation and with Independence Day approaching, they point out no chances can be taken. "It was better to be safe than sorry," an official said.

'Uproar over conversion to Hinduism'
Sharia courts do not allow Muslims to formally renounce Islam, preferring to send apostates to counselling and, ultimately, fining or jailing them if they refuse to desist.

Truly Asia. Hah!

Lalu wants Patna railway station to be world class
The proposed project is to redevelop the station and its surrounding areas into a world class station with superior services for passengers as also superior train operation and maintenance facilities.

Who goes there? Now if Lalu is bent on making Patna station world class, he should make it certain that the colour scheme is maroon and yellow. The colours of pan spit and shit.

Man's smelly feet trigger police raid
German police broke into a darkened apartment fearing they would find a dead body, after neighbors complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase.

Just like suicide

Most religious beliefs say that a sure fire way to go to hell is to commit suicide. I am not too worried about afterlife as I do not believe in the soul/god/karma school of thought. But if you do, then newsflash sucker! You are going to hell. Muhuhuhuhuhaaahaaahaaaaaaa!

Why you ask? Well suicide is to end one's own life by premeditated intent. That is if a person indulges in an activity that will take his life, the person is committing suicide. Several people, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, blah blah, smoke/drink and then a vast number of people gleefully eat junk food. Now it is an established fact that junkfood/smoking/boozing/enjoying-life-in -general kills. Ergo you are all committing suicide. QED.

Get ready for eternal hellfire! Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!

(I love evil laughter!)

The exploding SMPS

Wail! My computer is broken!! I was sitting peacefully listening to songs and checking my mail. Suddenly there was a phutt sound and blam went my SMPS. I suspect my video card is the villain. It's fan had stopped working and it has now probably killed the power supply. This is the second power supply lost in three months. Booooooo. I can't imagine what will happen if one of my hard disks is corrupted. Shudder....

Mostly Harmless - 2 July 2007

This happenes to be the first of my compendium of quirky stories I find during the day at work. Ford Prefect was right with things as stupid as we do, we are mostly harmless...

Randy sniffer dogs get the sack
Two Thai street mutts who became ace sniffer dogs at an airport near the notorious "Golden Triangle" opium-producing region have been fired for urinating on luggage and sexually harassing female passengers.

Florida man's headache mystery solved by a bullet
The wife, April Moylan, fled the emergency room when the bullet was discovered but later told deputies she had accidentally shot her husband as he slept early on Tuesday.

A peck into nightmare
A flock of sparrows has been pecking at Jayraj Shastri and his friends Pankaj Vishrolia and Mahesh since Wednesday. The pecking is so severe that the men can’t go out of their homes and one day the birds even chased the three nearly a kilometre away.

Ranks of freedom fighters swell
The home ministry’s list of the number of persons who are getting the ‘Swatantrata Sainik Samman Pension’ is increasing rather than declining, 60 years after India became independent. In July 2004, the number of freedom fighters who were getting pension was 1,67,873; it increased to 1,68,906 in December. In 2005, it further increased to 1,69,945.

Amarnath shivling melts completely
The shivling forms each year on its own from ice. The main reason for its melting is said to be too many pilgrims inside the cave. Over one lakh people visited the shrine before the yatra had been officially flagged off, many of them carrying cooking gas.

Muggers leave their own pictures behind
Two German teenagers robbed a girl but accidentally left their own pictures behind for police on a discarded mobile phone.

Mayor to print photos to deter prostitution
An Italian town's mayor hopes to shame men into not using prostitutes by photographing cars that pick them up and publishing the details in local newspapers.

Strikers have new gripe--no sex
African workers striking over pay and benefits have a new complaint -- they no longer have the energy for sex.