Today is the day the producers for Business Now go roaming through our offices, filming a segment for Tech TV. While its a great opportunity for the company, I’m kinda missing the personality the office showed before it got spiffed up for its close-up shot. The walls have been scrubbed clean. Most of the desks are clean. The pig’s sty of a snack area has been cleaned up and is now spotless.

Now the cleanliness is all fine and good, but the bell we ring for sales has been taken down. The white board, typically sporting clever movie quotes, has been wiped clean. Even the humor I added to the break-room bulletin board (an airline safety card printout to go with the other official notices), has been taken down. Bummer.

The saving grace is that my buddy Greg came in unshaved and wearing one of his festive shirts. He panicked when he remembered today was filming day, and ran out to grab some shaving cream.

I wish I would’ve stopped him before he cleaned himself up. We’re gonna come off looking like dorks if the film crew doesn’t have anything interesting to film. Maybe I’ll spill coffee on my slacks so I can walk around the rest of the day with no pants.

I went to work behind a van for RentoKil Tropical Plant Services. In my morning fog, I read that as “rent-to-kill plants.”

I came up with a great marketing idea for them: Why take the time and expense to kill your own plants when you can use ours? Try Rent-To-Kill plants! Pay only for what you abuse!

Let Rent-To-Kill provide the compost-to-be! You provide the neglect!

I’m surprised nobody’d nominated Bubb Rubb for California governor. With Little Sis as Lt. Gov, the state could be back to party-ville in no time!

I read an interesting story in last week’s Noise And Disturber about a robber who got shot by a passerby. A woman was depositing her paycheck into an ATM in town when a man approached her from behind, pushed her in the back, and said “I’ll take that,” grabbing $400 in cash from the woman. The woman spun around and grabbed the man’s shirt, pushing him to the ground. She then began to scream that she was being robbed.

A man in a nearby car saw the altercation, pulled out a small-caliber gun he keeps with him, put his arm in the robber’s car, and ordered him to stop. When the robber tried to drive off with the man’s arm still in the car, the man shot him in the leg.

Police got the report and alerted local hospitals to be on the lookout for the robber, who was subsequently apprehended. When the would-be thief was asked about his wound, all he could say was “It’s wrong, man!”

Uh-huh. It’s wrong to get shot while stealing someone’s money, but stealing it is okay? Too funny.

The bystander won’t be charged for shooting the dumbass robber, and the robber lived and thus hopefully will learn something from this little encounter. Kudos to the quick-acting bystander for getting involved.

Speaking of the news media, this Tuesday my office will be inundated with news crews. Seems we’ve been chosen to be the topic of a Business Now profile, which should be shown on Tech TV and then perhaps in certain ABC News TV markets. The gist is that Oculan is succeeding in a tough business market. I suppose the producers will be coming to find out what our secret is.

I can save them the time in saying it right here: we’ve got good, smart people. It’s a fantastic team. The chemistry is right in this company, and chemistry often makes the difference between success and failure. Great people can do great things together. It certainly is worlds apart from the situation at $FORMER_EMPLOYER, that’s for sure.

Take Microsoft, for instance (“please! Bah dum-bum!”). They became the world’s biggest tech company through the sheer talent of their workforce. As much as I love to hate them, I give them credit for their ability to hire some extraodinarily talented people. Once a company gets a lock on the talent, it’s “game over.”

I hope the daylong filming that takes place Tuesday can convey that to the audience, that we’re a (work)force to be reckoned with. I hope our so-called competitors quake in their boots after seeing us on national television. Suckas!

I’m at Lake Gaston this morning, out in the boonies with nothing but dial-up access. Even so, I’m looking around my family blogosphere and it doesn’t look good. Oh sure, my site was down yesterday afternoon – due to a power failure. No word yet whether it was related to the Northeast power outage. 🙂

At any rate, I’m a bit disappointed in my fellow bloggers. C’mon, folks! JeffTurner.Net and OldNole.com are completely down, and the Wysiblog is coughing up a SQL Server error. Props to JamieGaines.com for having an actual, working website this morning.

More and more, I get bummed when I can’t tune into my fellow bloggers and find out what’s going on. All those media links on the bottom right of the page? I hardly ever go there anymore. I’d much rather hear what my friends and family have to say on a topic than listening to the newsheads. And THAT comes from a certified news junkie.

I was perusing my weblogs yesterday when I saw the familiar sight of Scooter, the spidering engine of AltaVista (no, Scott, not you). Scooter pulled down my robots.txt file, as all good spiders should. But then it did something quite unexpected: it followed links that I had specifically prohibited it from following in my robots.txt file!

This file has been used on my site for years. Its purpose is really to cut down on spammers from grabbing my email addresses through search engines. Whenever I see a search engine not obeying the robots.txt, it has a pretty good chance of getting banned from my site.

I’ve never known Altavista to be rogue player, so I emailed their support staff demanding an explaination. They then asked me for logfiles, which I provided them. As of yet, the ball is still in their court. I demanded an answer from them as to why they would break the rules. They certainly got some ‘spaining to do.

I’ll update this story when I get a response back from Altavista. In the meantime, you might want to check your logfiles, too, to see if you’re also a victim.

Yesterday’s power outage in the Northeast is the topic of all news now. Fifty million people were affected. Makes you wonder if all those interconnected power grids were really such a good idea, eh?

In the office here, we were swapping stories about Hurricane Fran’s power outage. Greg and I were both impressed at the number of stars that could be seen in the night sky. All that light pollution was gone. It was amazing. I guess its good to get knocked out of our comfortable world every now and then. Puts things in perspective.

Meanwhile, I’m checking the State Surplus website for used generators, ’cause you never know. 🙂
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From Bill Maher’s weblog. Good stuff:

PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES

The heat wave across Europe has killed at least 100 people in Paris. Yes, they’re even surrendering to the heat. The stifling weather has driven Parisians to extreme measures, like showering. Experts say it’s so hot on the Champs Elyssee that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk – and then rudely serve it to an American tourist for $24. What are the chances this heat wave – the worst in Europe since, oh, Stonehenge was built – is the result of global warming? I’d say 100 percent, but I’m sure the Bush administration will continue to ignore the problem until somebody points out that Norway has melted.