A Neverending Stream of Hilarity

At least for me.

I can count on one hand how many sites on the internet have left me reduced to hysterical tears and shuddering, mouth-breathing gasps simply because they were that funny. Granted, I have a very strange sense of humor, some colleagues might even call me strange period, but still: I think I know funny when I see it. And today I will show you something very funny, and even if you doubt me on account of my self-admitted strangeness, this is my blog post and I’m sitting here making the clackety noise with my keyboard, so you might just want to go along for the ride. Trust me.

Just to give you a baseline, I find most things that people flit about email not very funny. I’m the boring jerk who’d rather be taken off joke email lists because, well, they’re not funny and I, again, am a jerk that way. I’m much more apt to start email flame wars with my colleagues for their sheer entertainment value than forward around links and jokes.

Also I am a word nerd. I like writing. I like reading.

I also like the completely absurd. I have often thought about writing a few Friday blog posts about serious topics with totally false, absurd, downright wrong information, but then I realized John Hodgman has a corner on that market. I was so angry about blowing that opportunity, but that’s another story.

So, take a weird sense of humor, word nerdiness, and an affinity for the downright absurd and you’ll see why I love so very much the Pronunciation Manual YouTube channel, (thanks to Jason Kotte for the link), which simply shows you how to pronounce oft-mispronounced words. The catch: the pronunciations are flat-out wrong, ridiculous and hilarious.

Here are some of my favorites, but you can go over to the channel to watch them all. I could link to them all day, but I’ll spare you and show only the best here:

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Unabashedly Waxing Poetic on Apple From a User’s Standpoint

I started using Macs when they were powered by the Motorola 68000′s and Berkeley Breathed anthropomorphized one in Bloom County. Even back then, in the miasma of the awakening WinTel juggernaut and whiffs of Amigas and Atari STs, Macs were considered niche machines. I wrote my first dozen short stories on that little Mac, and after upgrading to a Mac SE/30 I went through high school with that little beige box on my desk. The Mac, and the Commodore 64 that preceded it, were my first technology proving grounds.

Later, because I was a hopeless gaming nerd, I migrated to Windows PCs for a stint. I built my own rigs. I spec’ed my own motherboards, hard drives, RAM chips, cases, power supply and garish-colored fans. When GPUs were invented, I pored over every polygon each had the potential to push. I had become a full-on hardware nerd.

My stay on the Windows side of thing lasted longer than I expected, because that happened to be the same time Steve Jobs was exiled from Apple and John Sculley began his seemingly-intentional grounding of the company into any rocky shore he could find. The Windows PC era was in full bloom, and nobody outside really dedicated typesetting/design studios ever thought about Macs again. Everyone thought Apple had been relegated into insignificance; Michael Dell even suggested that Apple should sell the stock back to shareholders and ‘shut the company down’.

In the early 2000′s, as real life became more real and I wasn’t spending my nights fragging strangers in Rocket Arena 3, I was looking for a more elegant computing setup. My giant, power-sucking, room-heating beast of  PC was too much, Windows was too boring, and I longed for something new. As it turned out for me, everything old indeed does become new again.

I did something that made everyone laugh at me: I bought an overpriced, shiny, white MacBook. That was back in OSX 10.1 days, when the OS was unquestionably immature and limited to the point of being annoying. It was also during the very beginning of Apple’s real resurgence, a movement that saw the iPod give way to the iPhone, and the introduction of what many argue is the new modern-day portable computer: the iPad. It also heralded a bona fide Mac explosion.

Today, I’m Apple everywhere, for better or worse. I have an iMac, MacBook Air, iPhone 4S, iPad and Apple TV. Everything just works. My days of fiddling with Windows and building my own machines have given way to technology that enables me to do what I want, easily, effortlessly. I  know it’s bad form to gush uncontrollably about a tech bias in public, but Apple has done something amazing with itself over the past 12 years, and I’m proud to say I’ve been along for (most of) the ride, through the doldrums as well as the ascent. To me, and from the perspective of the user, Apple is a brave company, one that stands for higher standards and holds a focus on user experience that is in its DNA, as opposed to watery marketing fodder.

A few days ago, Apple announced a historic quarterly earnings report. Even by the hyperspazzy standards of Wall Street analyst wonks everywhere, Apple absolutely showed that it is winning pretty much every battle its fighting. Scratch that — it’s not just winning, it’s dominating.

Apple announced sales of $46 billion. Think about that. Here’s a $100-billion-plus company growing at a 73% clip, which simply isn’t supposed to happen. Sales in Apple’s past quarter exceeded its entire 2009. And this year, we’re looking at the iPad 3, the iPhone 5, probably an Apple TV reincarnation, and who knows what else. What’s for sure is that this momentum shows no signs of slowing.

Some other interesting trivia in light of Apple’s performance:

Data shows that shows PC shipments waning — except at Apple.

Farhad Manjoo puts things in perspective for anyone who can’t get their head around what Apple just announced: Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).

At Verizon, 55% of all phone sales for 4Q 2011 came from iPhones. That means two iPhone models (the 4 and 4s) outsold every Android device the carrier offers combined.

Finally, here’s the ultimate framework in which to look at Apple’s data: it just posted the second-most-profitable quarter in any company’s history.

Where’s Charlie Sheen when you need him? Oh, he’s right here.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I heard a radio ad a few days ago that has been bugging me, so I’m going to riff on it here. Sorry, no links or cat stories this week.

In the radio spot, the voiceover guy says in closing, “We do what’s right for the customer, not what’s right for the company.”

The second I heard that I bristled. I thought, what a myopic approach not only to running a business, but also communicating with your customers.

What bugs me is the notion that these two ideas are separate, living in two different ideological silos, one completely unaware of the other. Silo one says, “Let’s do what’s best for the customer, screw the company.” Silo two says the opposite: “Let’s take care of the company, but nevermind the customer.”

Look at Apple, Amazon, Zappos: do we not have enough modern-day examples of how the radio ad’s thinking is totally wrong?

Let’s put our Steve Jobs hats on for a second: if you take care of your customers — build a great product,  provide a great service, create relationships and not just transactions — the company’s going to be just fine. Actually, way more than fine. It will thrive.

This idea is something that you hear a lot of companies espouse, but dig a bit deeper and it’s not always put into practice. Why? Gotta watch out for the company. Someone in some meeting realizes that taking care of the customer means looking at your products or services and maybe totally revamping them, because they’re not the best for the customer. And when that happens, the idea gets resistance and often dies on the vine. It gets relegated to a nice marketing tagline at best.

To us, it’s always been this: you watch out for your customers and clients, and the rest will come. There are the normal constraints of reason, of course — a smart company isn’t going to satisfy irrational, opportunistic customers — but for most cases, there’s little need to think that taking care of the customer and the business are different things.

I can’t tell you how many times we have told clients that they don’t need implement module X, or they really don’t need custom interface Y, or that idea Z would wind up stressing their internal teams despite netting us a nice engagement contract. Each time, the customer has come back to thank us for shooting straight with them, even when the money/deal/project was ours for the taking.

It’s about doing the right thing, all the time, without exception. The money we have lost by walking away from those projects has come back to us threefold when our customers refer us to other opportunities with colleagues or partners. Every time, it’s, “You guys shot me straight, and I was blown away by that. I want to introduce you to a colleague of mine who has a big PeopleSoft project in the hopper but is sick of being burned by other consulting companies.”

You take care of your customers, and you take care of the business. Same time, same thing. No difference.

As for me personally, I’d be wary of any company whose advertising talks of it being an either/or proposition. It’s crazy enough to think it, but it’s another level of crazy altogether to articulate it.

Anyway, there’s my riff. Have a great weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I came home early from work the other day. I hung my jacket up, kicked off my shoes and began what I thought was a normal walk to the bathroom.

And then I saw this.

If you’ve been reading this blog on Fridays — and my condolences if you have — you know this is the cat that runs our house. He’s a Bengal, a mini-tiger, and we treat him that way. Not a day goes by when I don’t thank my stars he’s not person-sized, because if he were, I’d be staying at home on the floor playing with catnip-filled feather toys and he’d be out in the world, probably driving a BMW and buying islands and wearing a Vertu Bluetooth diamond headset, the gems filled with the souls of his enemies. Incidentally, I have the same feelings about ants, but without the BMW and soul stuff. They’re just not that sophisticated.

Anyway, I’m walking towards the bathroom, and there he is. Looking at me like that. Just STARING. I stop and stare RIGHT BACK. I have the dim realization this is a stand-off; the first one to blink or move too abruptly will set off a chain reaction that will result in torn carpet and one of us hiding under the bed for a few hours. Something is amiss.

Everyone I show this picture too is all, “Aww, how cute.” If only they understood how NOT CUTE this is. If you know this cat, this look is about as cute as the hospital scene in Jacob’s Ladder.

So we’re staring at each other. The house is dead quiet, and I can feel myself slipping into FELINE TELEPATHY MODE, a power given to me when I was born by a wolf named Hircine. Never mind the weird juxtaposition of feline and lupine references. Just ignore that, if you will. I am a blogger. I am allowed to do stuff like that.

We begin our mental communication.

HIM: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HOME SO EARLY?

ME: What does it matter? What are you up to?

HIM: NOTHING.

ME: Well, why do you look –

HIM: YOU’RE HOME REALLY EARLY.

ME: Yeah, I am. And you’re acting weird.

HIM: THIS WOULDN’T BE A PROBLEM IF YOU WEREN’T HOME SO EARLY.

ME: What wouldn’t be a problem?

HIM: THIS.

ME: Tell me what’s going on. You’re not fooling anyone.

HIM: HEY.

ME: What?

HIM: HOW YA’ DOING?

ME: What? Fine. What do you mean?

HIM: I AM DOING NOTHING. EVERYTHING IS FINE. I AM NOT UPSTAIRS WITH THE GIANT ORANGE CAT SLEEPING WITH HER, WHO I PRETEND TO HATE WHEN YOU’RE AROUND. I AM MOST CERTAINLY NOT DOING THAT, SO WE CAN END THIS CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW.

Me: Wha?

HIM: I AM NOT THE CAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.

ME (Jedi mind-tricked): Okay.

HIM: BUT I AM HUNGRY.

ME: Okay.

HIM: …

ME: …

HIM: LIKE, HUNGRY RIGHT NOW.

ME: Okay.

After I fed him, I went outside and ate grass and recited Journey lyrics for 20 minutes before I realized I got Jedi-owned by an eight-pound cat.

Yes, your life is better than mine.

Here are some links:

Here’s something cool: Tubalr helps you listen to a band’s top YouTube videos without all the clutter YouTube brings. Very cool. Just type in the band or artist you’re interested in and off you go.

Here’s the best idea for a travel mug I’ve seen in, well, pretty much forever.

A new beauty product called Fotoshop that quite literally makes the entertainment and beauty industries go ’round. Everyone, stop buying your traditional creams and vitamins and invest in this stuff, because this is the secret ingredient, the fountain of youth.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Recall, if you will, my post from a few months ago in which I introduced you to my Bengal cat, who sits at the dinner table, like a small, furry, vaguely smelly human and stares at us while we eat. That was pretty bad. If you guys cared enough about my cat/dinner/manners matrix to email me, you ‘d have said things like:

Jeff, as a fellow pet owner, I cannot believe you are letting your cat sit at the table. You are instilling horrible habits! You need to stop doing that now!

and

Jeff, man, what is wrong with you? Today you’re letting your cat sit at the table and glare at you, but tomorrow it will get worse. Way worse. You are writing a check you can’t cash, son.

and

Seriously, you are a horrible human being.  You will soon find out why – when your cat DECIDES TO OVERRUN YOUR LIFE. You monster.

If you guys sent me those emails – which you DID NOT, so let’s be clear on that – you WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT.

I am writing this today to tell you the imaginary you that sent the imaginary emails to me was SPOT ON. The situation has worsened.  Here’s the same cat, fast forward a mere three months:

(Click to enlarge…if you dare.)

Not much different from the original, you say? WELL YOU SAY WRONGLY. Below I will note the differences so you can argue with me over imaginary email, if you so desire:

1. Note the eyes, which have become black, hate-filled and soulless. Looking into them is like looking into an endless abyss, and it fills you with a weakness I cannot describe. I would shudder in fear and recoil right now, but I am dedicated to writing this blog post for you, the reader who never emails me.
2. You’ll note he has a plate now. A PLATE. Yes, we gave him his own plate off of which he can eat his roast turkey breast. He has more table comfort than most humans.
3. You’ll note the plate is clean, as he devoured what probably was an eighth of a pound of roast turkey in 19 seconds flat.
4. I gave him a blueberry to have along with his turkey, but as you can see, HE IS VERY ANGRY ABOUT THIS. His spirit-burning glare says:
• I am a cat, not a human, so don’t give me any of this fruit garbage.
• In case you never looked in an encyclopedia, the Internet or other tome of world knowledge, zoological and otherwise, you should know cats are CARNIVORES.
• That means we eat meat.
• YOU are made of meat.
• I think we understand each other.
• That is all.
5. It’s clear he runs the dinner table, NAY OUR LIVES.

That’s where things stand right now. That’s the update. I am not proud of the deteriorated situation, but as a journalist of high integrity who makes pretty much everything up based off a funny picture in his iPhone’s photo library, I feel it is my duty to report the truth.

Before you fire up your Gmail and don’t send me an email about this problem, or the inherent evilness of my cat, I wish to share a link or two with you:

These NuTouch gloves are just the thing for you iPhone users who want to tweet or twonk or Facebook or whatever in the cold.

Go crazy on the carbs during the holidays, did you? No? Quit projecting my stuff on to you? OK. Maybe I should read New Scientist’s Eight Lazy Ways to Lose Weight.

Men who shop in bulk. This sounds a lot like me. When I find something I like, I buy several models of it in case the company stops making it or we find ourselves in the middle of a giant national disaster and a wide array of sweaters is utmost on my mind.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Whatever you do, don’t email me. I get way too many of your non-emails as it stands.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

A Note About Blogging Frequency

As we head into the holidays, posting will be a little light here. It’s not that I don’t love you guys, but I’m pretty sure/hopeful you have other things to be doing over the next two weeks than reading a blog. If you seriously can’t get enough, I have two suggestions: 1) check your meds, and 2) don’t be afraid to click around our Categories (first right-hand sidebar, third section) for stuff you might have missed.

Also: Thanks

We started this blog back in late 2008. It began by drawing two, maybe three, visitors per day. Eventually we got up to 25 unique visitors per week. I still remember the first time we cracked 100 visitors in a week, which was right around March 2009. It was slow going.

Today, we have about 5,000 unique visitors per month, and our pageviews are upwards of 35K. The crowning moment for me was when I was walking through Detroit Metro airport one day in late 2009. I had my MIPRO shirt on, as I was returning from a user group. In the elevator heading to the parking deck, a gentleman looked at my shirt and said, “MIPRO, huh? I know you guys.” I asked him if he was a client and he said, “Not yet, but I read your blog every day.”

Really?  That’s bananas.

It’s easy to sit here behind my monitors and hammer these words out and ignore the fact that people out there read our stuff on a daily basis. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a necessary mindset for serious writers/bloggers: you can’t sit around and worry about how your audience will interpret your stuff.  You either write, or you don’t, and it’s OK to have an opinion. But it still blows my mind when someone emails me or tells someone on the MIPRO team that they dig our blog. If you’re a blogger yourself, you know how cool that feeling is.

So I want to say thanks to all of you, the readers. Without you this would be our own private echo chamber, and there’s no value in that for anyone. We started this blog to share thoughts and opinion with you, not rattle around our own dumb ideas to each other. That’s what we have lunches for.

Enough already. Do I get to read some links or something?

Yes, you do. I wouldn’t dare send you into the holidays with stress, fruitcake, eggnog and insane relatives looming at every corner without some stuff to read.

Is your holiday soup or casserole too fatty? There’s an easy solution to help skim out some extra fat, but you have to be quick. Drop an ice cube into it, as the ice will attract the fat, and you can easily scoop it out with a spoon. But be quick, because in case you haven’t noticed, ice melts quickly in hot things.

As a staunch iPhone user, I admit I’m more than a little intrigued by the new Galaxy Nexus.  Here’s Danny Sullivan’s review of the new Android flagship, and it’s the most balanced I’ve read. It’s a review that talks about day-to-day life with the Galaxy Nexus and spends very little time submerged in the newness of the handset and Android 4.0 (dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, or ICS).

Slate.com on The Old Fashioned, a drink I often order to get a guaranteed sneer from the bartender that says, “Seriously dude? What are you, 80?”

The best Longreads of 2011. If you’re a fan of longish and amazingly well-written articles, don’t miss this list. There’s some great stuff here.

Jimmy Kimmel asks parents to play a trick on their kids as an early holiday gift prank. The results are awesome.

Happy holidays, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Do you overthink things? Does this article sound like something you need?

I have chronic, epic, daily failures with this, as I can overanalyze what gym socks to wear on what day given forecasted temperatures, footwear expectations and workout frequency (this is a real example, one that’s even scarier and more anxiety-inducing when I see it all spelled out in front of me).  There’s nothing I don’t break down into a multi-factored decision matrix that I don’t get the urge to put into an Excel pivot table. Packing for a trip involves so many variables and forays into weather forecasts and terrain research that I have thought about building a server — an Anxiety Server, if you will – to help me with all these gymnastics.

I am not kidding.  Trying to go on gut feel is a great idea/goal for me, but one that requires discipline and a sturdy mental tire iron with which I can beat back my OCD into its little cave. There’s all sorts of material out there about how we should get back in touch with our intuition, with our gut, to life a simpler, happier life. Me, anything that doesn’t involve a list or a computer to help consider the variables is clearly ineffective.

People who don’t know me often say, “Man, that’s impressive. I don’t see how anyone would have the mental resources to juggle all of that.”

People who know me say, “This is why you’re so messed up. You spend all your energy worrying about wearing  your old socks first so you don’t wear out your new ones that you can’t remember that spreadsheet you were supposed to put together.” (Right now, some of my MIPRO colleagues are nodding.)

The upside to this is that over the past two years or so, I can literally consider variables most people wouldn’t even think about. I do outwardly appear organized. Some even call me ‘smart.’

The downside is that I have 11,000 screaming voices in my head and only the ones belonging to giant mental closet-beasts can get my attention. And those, naturally, are the most insecure jerks of the bunch.

Intuition? Gut? Yeah, they pretty much get washed away in the noise.

I often pretty much serve the wrong master. I read on the interblogtubes that this a growing epidemic among people who juggle 20 different things every day and stare at 30+ browser tabs for a living. I’m starting to believe it.

The downstream consequence? My son, age 7, is starting to show signs that he can say some pretty smart things as a result of his fledgling overthinking habit:

Me (to son, at dinner table): Do you know why people started using bread for sandwiches and hamburgers?
Son: (thinking, making pensive gestures and all) Because the bread traps the heat and keeps food warm?
Me: No, actually, to keep your hands clean. But I’m going to love the Ferrari I have when you’re a famous physicist, you little Junior Overthinker, you.

He’ll be a super scientist in ratty socks. Hooray?

With that out of the way, here are some links to ease you into something more coherent than what you just read:

Is Siri Apple’s broken promise?

Cello Wars: a Star Wars parody lightsaber duel. Pretty awesome.

The most popular how-to guides of 2011.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I don’t have a story from my bizarre childhood to tell you, but I will say I am listening to Nickelback on Spotify right now and really digging them. You know, the Nickelback that everyone comes out of the woodwork to say they hate, completely, wholly, entirely, even though they have no idea who Nickelback is and what most of their stuff is like?  Yeah, that Nickelback.

I don’t get it. No band bats .1000, and Nickelback surely isn’t an exception. But they have plenty of good pop-rock tracks in their catalog. Their lyrics aren’t horrific, cobbled-together semi-thoughts all the time. Sometimes they actually approach poignant, even though nobody’s going to group them in with rock poets like Rush or Dream Theater.

So seriously…why the hate? I haven’t seen a band receive so much vitriol since this one time I watched a rap band try to cover Poison’s ‘Fallen Angel’ in a pretty divey bar. The lead singer got hit with a half-eaten cheeseburger and was told to go home. Not kidding.

Anyway, I’m trying to shut down many of my open Chrome tabs right now (33 tabs open at the moment), and the best way is to share some stuff with you so I can close them in good conscience:

The most expensive 14 car pile-up you’ll ever see.

Here’s your White House petition to repeal the stupid regulation that says ‘no electronics in airplane mode’ during takeoff and landing.

Instantly redecorating a living room with Video Mapping. Amazing, and insanely useful if it ever trickles down to the public.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

It’s strange what open-ended, odd memories your brain holds on to.

We were 11. Our friend Shawn had this thing about putting tinfoil boots on his cat. He’d talk about it more often than one would expect, to the point where you realized, He’s not kidding. He really wants to put tinfoil boots on his cat.

Chuck was the cat in question, and he was a beast all the way around: grossly overweight with a bulbous head and squinty eyes, he defied what Siamese cats are supposed to be. He was old and slow and clumsy, which made him hapless, which is why I think Shawn wanted to put tinfoil boots on him: because the chances of him being able to do so were very high while simultaneously having almost no chance of getting injured himself.

Everyone thought Shawn was weird duck, even weirder when he started talking about cutting short whatever we were doing so ‘we’ could go home and put tinfoil boots on Chuck. It was all uncomfortable small talk until the day he invited us over for some casual Commodore 64 video games, and, as it turned out, to watch him ensnare Chuck and finally put aluminum booties on him.

When we walked in the house, Sean was in the living room — his mother off at work — and Chuck was on the couch. Chuck, having the metabolism of a potato and the IQ to match, was lying on the couch while Shawn cut small swaths of tinfoil from a roll of Reynolds Wrap. Shawn barely looked up at us. Chuck stared at a throw pillow, completely unaware.

“Hey guys.”

“Hi Shawn,” I said. “Um, what are you doing?”

“Finally gonna put booties on Chuckles here.”

The three of us — me, Chris and Tom — stared at him. Tom finally spoke, “Dude, we’re here to play Bruce Lee. We don’t want to put tinfoil on Chuck.”

Shawn looked up from his tinfoil and pile of rubber bands. “Oh come on. Consider it science.”

“Or consider it mean,” I said. It seemed to me that putting tinfoil boots on a cat with likely cardiac problems was not a good idea.

“Nah,” Shawn said, expertly sidestepping the issue.

Then Chris asked what none of us probably would have thought to: “Once you get the tinfoil on Chuck, what are you gonna do?”

Sean had the answer in his mental chamber and didn’t miss a beat. “Gonna put him on the kitchen floor, turn on the vacuum and see if he freaks. If he does, he won’t be able to run, and that will be hilarious.”

None of us were vets or cat whisperers, but we were pretty sure if you put an overweight 14 year old Siamese cat on a linoleum floor and hit the vacuum while said cat was wearing tinfoil booties rubberbanded around his legs, yeah, we were thinking, he’ll probably freak. If you’re a 14 year old overweight cat, freaking probably leads to not being alive anymore.

The exact mechanics of the debate that ensued are unimportant, but in the end sanity prevailed: the tinfoil was thrown away, the vacuum stayed in the closet, Chuck didn’t Code Blue in front of sink, and Shawn didn’t go to juvy. Shawn did seem slightly defeated, but later came around to admit that it wasn’t a good idea after all. “Cats are pretty uptight,” Sean concluded, authoritatively.

We let the issue rest after Captain Humane closed the topic with this. We all thought it best not to upset whatever balance his hormones found that made him temporarily stable. We’re pretty sure Chuck appreciated it too.

We didn’t do much with Shawn after that.

Some links:

What if books were free?

Here’s a gallery of babies swimming underwater. The photo geek inside me wants you to know this is more impressive than it sounds.

The worst Christmas tree in Britain. Yeah, pretty much.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Last week I treated (?) you to an imaginary chat conversation with Jonah, one of my cats. Some insane people said it was good so instead of actually being creative this week, today I’ll do the same for another one of my cats, named Enzo.

The difference is that Jonah is a lovable dumbo, and Enzo is a purebred Bengal who could get accepted to Ninja Killer University without even submitting an essay. Here’s how he rolls.

JeffVentura: Enzo, it’s Jeff. What’s happening?

JeffVentura: Enzo.

JeffVentura: ENZO

EnzoCat: what

EnzoCat: dont you yell at me jeff

EnzoCat: ill kill you

JeffVentura: I’m checking in. What’s going on?

EnzoCat: nothing

JeffVentura: Liar.

EnzoCat: ok i just got done whaling on jonah and that other helpless orange cat who sits in corners all day

JeffVentura: We talked about this. I told you to stop messing with those two.

EnzoCat: the slow orange one is a joke

EnzoCat: she’d never make it in the wild

EnzoCat: let me eat her

JeffVentura: Leave her alone. I mean it. And leave Jonah alone too.

EnzoCat: whats funny is jonah is bigger and heavier than me and i still own him

EnzoCat: hes an embarrassment to wild cats everywhere

EnzoCat: id eat him too but he smells like plastic

JeffVentura: If I have to come home to take care of this, you will not be happy.

EnzoCat: come home and ill eat your face

JeffVentura: WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

EnzoCat: nothing

JeffVentura: ENZO.

EnzoCat: that was jonah he jumped up on the computer and typed that

EnzoCat: always tryin to get me in trouble

EnzoCat: i wish he didn’t smell like plastic

JeffVentura: I really regret teaching you how to Skype.

JeffVentura: Just because you’re a wild cat doesn’t mean you can be a jerk all the time.

JeffVentura: Nobody likes a jerk.

EnzoCat: watch your back when youre sleepin is all im sayin

JeffVentura: EXCUSE ME?

EnzoCat: man there goes jonah again

JeffVentura: I don’t believe that for one second.

EnzoCat: hey how do i turn on itunes on this computer

JeffVentura: Don’t mess with anything. AT ALL. Why on earth do you want to start iTunes?

EnzoCat:i want to play stone cold killer by winger

JeffVentura: You what?

EnzoCat: its my theme song i play it when im huntin and whalin

JeffVentura: I just got done telling you to LEAVE THE OTHER CATS ALONE.

EnzoCat: maybe i can beat the plastic smell out of jonah

JeffVentura: Don’t even THINK about it. I mean it.

JeffVentura: Do you understand me?

JeffVentura: ENZO

EnzoCat: wut

JeffVentura: KNOCK IT OFF.

EnzoCat: oh heres itunes

EnzoCat: cool

EnzoCat: i’m rockin out to winger

EnzoCat: gotta go find jonah

JeffVentura: Enough. I’mm coming home and you’re done with the computer. For good.

EnzoCat: says you human

JeffVentura: WHAT?

EnzoCat: hey theres jonah i have to go

EnzoCat: im hungry plastic smell or not

JeffVentura: DON’T.

ENZOCAT HAS LOGGED OFF. 10:42:42 AM.

After that, you need some links, don’t you? Why of course you do. Heck, I do.

David Pogue on the new Kindles. Executive summary: the new e-ink models are awesome, the Fire…meh.

Pixilated v. pixelated: don’t make this common grammatical mistake. Or, um, nobody will notice.

Hey, what are your plans for January? Probably being smashed by a tumbling space probe full of poisonous fuel. Also, hating yourself for what you did at the office holiday party.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

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