How are you answers Mar 17, 2008
Two recently heard answers to the question of "How are you": 
  1. Better than you.
  2. I'm awesome*.
*When said out loud, it implies the answerer is more awesome than the asker.  Just brilliant. #psychology
Wild Animal Crunch Mar 17, 2008
From the Unfortunate Product Names file:  Kellogg's Wild Animal Crunch Cereal. 
[Image: wildanimalcrunch.jpg]
Now with more mashed pandas!  Also available in polar bear, baby seal, and lemur flavors! #food
Bogus jobs (2) Mar 17, 2008
I'll start this off by saying "bogus" is the wrong word.  But I can't think of a better word, so I'm using it. 

I met a few people this weekend who work in an "industry" and have "job functions" I've never even dreamed existed.  They do something with promoting religious understanding at workplaces and schools and other places.  And that's it.  That's their job.  They have religious understanding, and they promote this understanding to other people, who pay them to do this.  Real money is exchanged in the passing-on of the understanding of religions. 

It's one thing to work in an obscure industry.  I used to work in one.  We made specialized optical equipment (lasers, lenses, mounts) that was used by universities and national research labs.  This certainly isn't an area of industry that's known and understood by many people.  But nonetheless, it's an industry, complete with profits, competition, and corporate mumbo jumbo. 

But the thing with most obscure industries is that they're filled with workers who have standard job descriptions.  For a company that makes widgets, there's usually some engineers, some accountants, some secretaries, some salespeople, some manufacturers, and some IT people.  It's like taking a cookie cutter description of a company, and inserting your company's name at the top.  Most companies are set up this way, or at least have some sort of resemblance to the cookie cutter.  Maybe they're just the accounting part, or maybe the IT.  But either way, most people in most industries have a job description that's at least partially understood by most people. 

So it's interesting to meet people who have a totally incomprehensible job description, who work in a completely made-up-sounding field, and who know and understand the scope of work they perform and even enjoy what they do.  I just sat there and thought, "You went to college for this?  There's a college for this?  And this is what you get paid to do?"  I'm sure people think the same thing about my job, but it's weird to be on the other side of the fence. #business