Category: Random

Best ways to kill your career.

I just read an interesting article concerning “Ten sure-fire ways to derail your career in IT”.

They list several ways to quickly put your career in the toilet if you so desired (you can read the article for yourself here).

While the article was well written, I couldn’t help but think that the faithful readers of this blog could surely come up with even more ingenious ideas than those presented.

We have actually covered this topic once before, but it’s been a long while ago and the topic is definitely worth revisiting. (you can read the original article “the best ways to get fired” here)

So tell me… if you needed a sure fire way to drop a promising career dead in it’s tracks… what would you do?

Hostess Cupcake turns 90!!! (or at least they did on the day before yesterday)

I just learned that on Sept. 14 (the day before yesterday) that Hostess celebrated 90 years of sweet creamy cupcake goodness. Why was I not notified of this earlier!?!?

I guess our infamous R&D department was taking a nap or something*.

While we all may have missed the ‘official’ celebration, we shouldn’t let that stop us from celebrating with that sweet fatty goodness of a hostess cuptake today!

What! You don’t have a cupcake?
Then make your own by following the recipe here or here

These recipes show how to make something very closely resembling a hostess cupcake (including the filling and icing.)

While you’re at it, why not take things up a notch and wrap it in bacon or add some candy corn? If you do this be sure and let us here at the blog know how it turns out. You could potentially win the opportunity to be a guest columnist** and describe your creation.

In honor of our (belated) celebration I have included a few facts about hostess cupcakes that I found on the hostess website.

  • Mystery surrounds who “invented” the original Hostess CupCake in 1919, however, we know it was baking executive D.R. “Doc” Rice who, more than 30 years later in 1950, added the signature seven squiggles and vanilla-creme filling.
  • Americans eat more than 600 million cupcakes every year
  • The original Hostess CupCake slogan was “You get a big delight in every bite!”

*R&D likely WAS taking a nap as they are prone to do between the hours of 8 and 5 most every Monday.

**guest columnist will (possibly) be chosen at random from all entries by our R&D department… Assuming they are aren’t taking their monday nap.

tennis for fat people

I was watching some of the 2009 U.S. Open tennis tournament with a friend, and we were discussing whether it would be interesting to have a tennis league for fat people.  There would be requirements to enter, such as being above a certain weight and a certain percentage of body fat.  The court surface would be the somewhat-flexible surface used at the Australian Open, so people can roll if they fall down from getting too much momentum during running.

The players could get sponsorships from junk food makers like Hostess.  Imagine the press conference afterwards, with players eating Twinkies during their post-match interview.  The advertising message would be “I can eat Twinkies and still win tennis matches!”

Also, more people could relate to this brand of tennis than the professional tours.  Plus it would be funny sometimes.  So I think some people would watch it.  This might not be a prime-time TV type sport, but there are lots of sports that get time on ESPN2 and various other sports channels.  Someone should make it happen.

a new perfect day to be outside holiday

The past few days have had near-perfect weather, particularly after summer when it’s too hot with too much humidity.  I’ve heard several people say it’s too good of weather to be inside working, and I’ve had that thought myself.  So what we need to start is a floating holiday for each Spring and Fall that’s based on the weather.  At least once each season, when the weather is perfect, everyone should get the day off to do whatever they want outside.  Various groups could sponsor pick-up games for sports, where people could just show up and play ball (football, basketball, baseball, tennis, etc.), and there could be picnics and tail-gate parties (because grilling would be ideal at these times).

Somebody needs to make this happen…  (Hint: If one of our state representatives were to get this started, I’m sure they would pick up some votes for actually doing something cool that the people want.)