void.fm

This weekend I started to read The Art of Demotivation again. For all of you who don't know Despair Inc. you should start with their demotivators first. Don't miss my personal favorites 1, 2 and 3.

The Art of Demovation is probably the most bizarre book I have read so far. It attacks the so-called "Noble Employee Myth" that seems to be common sense accross management seminars these days. I have been in these seminars and always felt I can agree on their message: "Treat your employees well and you will be successful. "

Now author E.L. Kersten says this is plain BS. According to him employees are the root cause to company failures. They make bad decisions, make mistakes, aliente customers, lack maturity, exploit their employer's generosity and steal from them. One way to correct these problems is following his principle called "Radical Demotivation&trade".

Initially I thought The Art of Demotivation is purely satire. The more time I spent with it the more I believe it contains some truth. I have been in companies that employ his management statetgies and have to admit that these companies maintain a steady profit _and_ have a low employee turnover. Strange, but true.

Funny side note:
The first two sentences in this book are: This book was written for executives. If you are not an executive, do not intend to become an executive, or have no hope becoming an executive, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.

A friend of mine ordered this book too. He is a regular employee, without the ambition to become an executive. Instead of the book he got an empty package containing one sheet of paper: "Checked and OK".

Posted by Jens Schumann at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

According to this guide for American tourists I live next to "Communists, Anarchists, Hippies, Students and Dog Poop". Luckily most of it is true.

So there is for instance this one vegetable garden in my street, where a few squatters try to raise tomatos and such. Somehow they forgot that plants need water...

Yesterday evening my girl friend parked next to this wonderful garden. And voila - this morning I had a hand-written "Do-it-yourself" ticket on my car. It states:

D.I.Y Strafzettel

FUCK YOU!

Apparently Mr. Bike-Punk didn't like that we parked that close to his bicycle. And noted that there is always the option of damaging the car. Good move, Mr. Bike-Punk. If you didn't write it down I wouldn't have noticed it (since the car is broken anyway).

I don't know whether Mr. Bike-Punk has chosen the paper for his ticket on purpose or not. It turns out it was written on a flyer for a "Capure the Flag competition". The antinationale Capture-The-Flag-Commitee asked everyone to register for a competition. Primary goal: Form a team and capture as many German flags as possible.

Three examples. One message. It's just embarrassing how boring the rest of Germany is.

Posted by Jens Schumann at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you ever thought Java™ Profiling is nothing for production or just too complex you might be interested in JETM release 1.0.

While far from being perfect, this library brings simple and easy to use performance monitoring to all types of applications. It mainly targets performance monitoring in production without side effects introduced by Java™ profilers.

Check out the sample performance monitoring console for this web demo. And of course project home too.

Posted by Jens Schumann at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well - I know this nation has been waiting for this since 1974. And yes, having a Fifa Soccer World Cup in Germany is a good thing™. But right now all I want is a fast forward button that brings me to July, 10th within seconds.

I mean Soccer is everywhere these days. You can't turn on your TV, read a newspaper, buy something or walk on a street without getting in touch with the World Cup. Although I can skip most of it there are situations where it's simply inevitable.

So for instance I expected problems with Hotel reservations and flights to certain destinations. I didn't expect it could be that bad. Just because the English Soccer Team and their wifes are located at my current working place hotels stopped accepting reservations. And I had to switch to train because there were no more flights. Since it's just an 6 hour Monday morning commute live isn't easier that way.

And then there are these strange marketing campains such as DBA partnering with Puma so that flight attendants have to wear sport clothes seen here and here. My personal favourite is the skirt-alike thing seen on the first picture. If DBA would hire models only this would be OK. Otherwhise it's just embarrassing.

Posted by Jens Schumann at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Obviously I should sell one or two Apple portables. Anyone interested?

Posted by Jens Schumann at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)