Excellent speech..

Excellent speech ... by Brigadier General Michael Kurilla.   Via Michael Yon, much more here...

Another Dilbert strip...

Another Dilbert strip ... that resonates oh-so-strongly with my corporate experience:

One incident in particular comes right to mind, in which my then-CEO, a nice fellow named John T., sent me off to make a budget spreadsheet for the engineering department.  He particularly wanted it to show the effects of a planned layoff.  When I brought the spreadsheet down, he said (these are his exact words):

“Fix that so that the total savings is $1.4 million.”

My calculations had showed a roughly $600 thousand savings.  Further discussion revealed that he really, truly didn't care whether the spreadsheet represented reality at all.  All he cared about was the bottom line.  So I just changed (as he stood there) the total savings cell from a formula to a fixed value of $1.4 million.  He said:

“Great!  But add just a little bit so it doesn’t look like we just made it up.”

At that point I reverted the spreadsheet to the way I had built it, emailed it to him, and told him I didn't want to know what he did with it...

Debbie update...

Debbie update...  All is well!  She's progressing nicely, getting around on crutches, and already able to put considerable weight on her surgery knee.  Her bandage comes off this afternoon, and tomorrow morning we've got the first physical therapy session scheduled...