Lets just see how much alike we are and if I can throw a little humor in here. I just heard about an incident yesterday that I find truly funny and find myself chuckling everytime I get a mental picture of this.

As a side note, the local dotnet UG sponsers what they call "The Masters" series of talks. It's an entire Saturday, 9-5, with one person and it costs no more then $50. Kevin McNeish gave one yesterday on WPF and WWF. As usual, a great presentation by him. And it did open my eyes to WPF. I originally didn't think there would be any use for it. But Kevin did say that WPF is a replacement for Windows forms. That in VS 2008 there is hardly any updates to Windows forms. All the efforts been placed in WPF.

Anyways, for the 2nd time that I've gone to these events, I ran into someone from the early days of my moving to Los Angeles. Yesterday it was a coworker from 10 yrs ago. He was pretty cool to work with back then, but he had a rather large wild streak that got him in trouble a lot.

Since its been 10 yrs we had quite a bit of catching up to do. So onto the real point of this story. He was working at a place undergoing a significant amount of downsizing. I don't know the timeframe, but he survived 3 rounds of layoffs. But knew his time was coming soon.

Sure enough, after round 4 is announced, he gets a call into his boss' office. It figured, this was it for him, so he pops a couple Alka Seltzers into his mouth and goes to the boss. There's the big VP sitting in the office too, when he gets there. They give him the speech about what they hope the downsizing will accomplish, how much they value his service, yada, yada, yada.

While they are yammering on, he starts sucking on the Alka Seltzer. In a minute or so, he falls on the floor, flopps around a little and has foam coming out the mouth.

There was a rather tense moment for his boss and the VP, as they scrambled to decide what kind of medical services they needed and attempted to call them.

I find this a truly outstanding idea. Frightened some people for a few minutes. But no hard feelings. My friend go a nice severence, along with a nice retainer to hang around for a few more months to help train an outsourcing company.

My friend got a small measure of payback for getting laid off without hurting anyone, for more then a few minutes of course.

I like these kind of ideas.

Some of these geeks need to let go their ego for a few. And step back to see exactly what it is that they are getting so uptight about.

I know this event here will make me think twice from now on, when I read a thread that I'm not too happy about.


>You and I may differ on some things ( which I think stem more from difference in life experiences, historical interpretation, current environment, and my crochety old age than serious differences about values or principals ) but we also see eye to eye on a lot of things.
>
>I've been reading this thread with both interest and sadness as I've known two of the parties involved for quite a while, consider them friends, and have had nothing but good experiences with them personally.
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>That said, I am always bemused by the level of vituperation that seems to go into geek slapfests. JVP, Steve Black losing patience with those he feels have wronged him, wars over stored procedures, VFP vs .net, whatever ...
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>(disclaimer: I like and respect both JVP and Steve very much and consider them friends as well )
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>I've seen real mortal enemies really try to do harm to each other over real life and death issues and that can be tragic, but this kind of stuff - which I pretty much equate with 'office politics' - seems scarier in a lot of ways as it is seldom about anything that truly matters, but the consequences sometimes are very real and the waste of human capital appalling. I understand from friends on college faculties and in the world of art critics/curators that this is also common there. Maybe it is the equivalent of the invention of football/rugby to replace the shield wall.
>
>I'm a reasonably confrontational person, do not suffer fools gladly, have an ego the size of a mountain, and shoot off my mouth more than I should, but I rarely feel anger, don't hold a grudge and can't imagine putting a lot of energy into vendetta unless it really involved something important. I can honestly say I don't have a lot of enemies and I probably don't spend 5 minutes a year stewing on wrongs done to me.
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>Maybe that is the issue - what is important - and that is why I can't empathize with the kind of go for the throat stuff I see in these cyberwars.
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>I admire people having things they care about, but I also admire perspective and I really hate to see friends lose theirs and turn their gifts to stuff that is unworthy of them.
>
>I gather from a lot of the posts that we are not alone in these sentiments and I guess that is encouraging.
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>
>
>>I was just thinking about something now. When I was living in Denver, I had a buddy that I used to talk to a lot about doing nefarious things to people we didn't like.
>>
>>He used to tell me about friends he learned from who grewup under the philosophy of "don't get mad, get even". My buddy used to tell me all kinds of stories of things his friends did in situations to people they didn't agree with.
>>
>>Not once, not ever, did a "get even" scenario result in permanent damage to someone. The scenarios typically resulted in the person who wanted to get even, having a laugh over something for a day or 2. And the other person being upset for a day or 2. But that was it.
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>>I can't imagine the morals of someone who is willing to do permanent damage of a job loss to someone else over the matter of a personal disagreement.
>>
>>
>>>I feel I should start this with, "Perry, we've had a few disagreements in the past," but that seems to be what everyone is saying to me. Don't want to overuse it. Am I really that cantankerous? Oh well, maybe time again for some self evaluation...
>>>
>>>I had those same thoughts. So utterly full of anger. I can only imagine what demons are hiding in that mind.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Besides the disbelief that something could go as far as this incident has, I'm even more amazed after reading the letter that Peter has linked to.
>>>>
>>>>What kind of person has that much vindictiveness in them that they a) bother to write this kind of letter, b) spend a significant amount of time they obviously spent to compile the data for the letter?
>>>>
>>>>At a minimum, I'm very glad I use a company name here that I started with a friend of mine a number of yrs ago, and have since ended. I have no intention of changing the name to reflect my actual wereabouts.
>>>>
>>>>>Jay, we've had a few disagreements in the past ;-) but I don't think you are at fault here.
>>>>>
>>>>>IMHO it is *highly* significant that people clicked to what you were talking about, despite the initial vagueness of your scenario.
>>>>>
>>>>>You did not cause that widespread recognition; IMHO it is something to think about for the participants in this sorry tale.
>>>>>
>>>>>FWIW, now that I've seen the letters I find myself shaking my head in disbelief, and wondering whether normal UT users need to create new "Renoir" UT ids in case one of our esteemed leaders decides to finish us too.