What a Joke!

So I’m watching the US Open the other day and it goes to commercial and what do I see? Well, they only show 3 commercials during the entire 2 weeks of coverage – Sharapova being following by smiling tennis balls (probably smiling because she’s so tall they all got a look up her skirt), the two sneeze factory dandelion seeds blowing all over the place, and my favorite: The corporate dingbat flying to a meeting with nothing but his windows/cell phone/PDA/blackberry-knockoff whatever thing that’s going to revolutionize the corporate world. I don’t know what the hardware is, but I know what it’s called – a single point of failure. I’m in the business, you see, and so I know how things really work.

In the commercial, our hero jumps on a plane with no baggage at all, thus saving time and aggravation, while dazzling everyone in the meeting with his one-stop-shop e-mail, phone, spreadsheet, PowerPoint, infra-red gizmo. “Wow,” a stunned meeting-goer says. ”Does that thing make phone calls, too?” My questions would be a little different. First, "why would you get on a plane without a change of clothes?" Probably because this guy flys out of fantasy land airport where they don’t have flights delayed or cancelled. Second, "what do you present when that piece of crap doesn’t work?” Oh, nothing I guess, the same thing that’s in his head. This guy must be a VP or a CEO. Nobody else would be that stupid. I figure it’ll work 4 or 5 times before the guy forgets his charger, he does charge it but it doesn’t take, he drops it and it breaks, the airport scanner blue-screens it, or he loses cell connectivity while trying to download the files he needs for his little dog and pony show. I’m equally sure some poor IT schlep will get blamed for VP knucklehead’s short-cited thinking. Hey, in 2006 nobody should have to carry a notebook and a pen. You just can’t do business with those caveman tools.