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May. 20th, 2004 10:56 amThis comes as an answer to "why I bugged out about Kitch & Maggie's practical joke on me" and to a running dialogue in this post about rude telemarketers and bad behavior.
When I asked Maggie why she did it, she replied "because it's so hard to pull one over on you. You are obsessive about details. If it had been something in the room, you would've figured it out in seconds." I grew up not wanting anyone to make a fool of me, so I learned to scope things. I then built the ability to be oblivious as a smokescreen for checking everything out. "Hi, I'll play dumb but I've actually figured out your plans already."
No wonder I do so well in sales, eh?
The topic of rewarding assholes has come up recently. However, we can forget that history can also edify assholes. I think of John von Neumann, the man everyone equates with inventing the computer. He wrote a "first draft" about the nature of the machine he was working on, ENIAC, that became the model for computer architecture for the next 40 years.
However, Eckert and Mauchly, the gentlemen from Philly that actually built ENIAC, were the ones that knew things beyond the theory. The book ENIAC shows angles you don't find elsewhere about how these men dealt with Johnny. He would handle the big wigs while they actually built the machine. Keep in mind they hired him, not the other way around. They needed a name to tote their project and get funding. He did the trick. So they bought a pompous smart guy so they could keep working on something all of them liked. Not enough people remember Eckert or Mauchly, but von Neumann...
I don't think I'm forming this thought well, but I need to hop in the shower and go to work so I'll close here.
-should I have started this post at all? Dante
When I asked Maggie why she did it, she replied "because it's so hard to pull one over on you. You are obsessive about details. If it had been something in the room, you would've figured it out in seconds." I grew up not wanting anyone to make a fool of me, so I learned to scope things. I then built the ability to be oblivious as a smokescreen for checking everything out. "Hi, I'll play dumb but I've actually figured out your plans already."
No wonder I do so well in sales, eh?
The topic of rewarding assholes has come up recently. However, we can forget that history can also edify assholes. I think of John von Neumann, the man everyone equates with inventing the computer. He wrote a "first draft" about the nature of the machine he was working on, ENIAC, that became the model for computer architecture for the next 40 years.
However, Eckert and Mauchly, the gentlemen from Philly that actually built ENIAC, were the ones that knew things beyond the theory. The book ENIAC shows angles you don't find elsewhere about how these men dealt with Johnny. He would handle the big wigs while they actually built the machine. Keep in mind they hired him, not the other way around. They needed a name to tote their project and get funding. He did the trick. So they bought a pompous smart guy so they could keep working on something all of them liked. Not enough people remember Eckert or Mauchly, but von Neumann...
I don't think I'm forming this thought well, but I need to hop in the shower and go to work so I'll close here.
-should I have started this post at all? Dante
