I actually invented a term during my tenure at Company X that not many people know of.

I call it – The Plier Solution.

It means, a simple straight-to-the point solution to a complex set of requirements set by a dimwitted boss.

How was this term originated? Well, back when I was with Company X, my job was to analyze failed electronics merchandise returned as part of the warranty claim from our end customers. But for some strange fucking reasons unknown to us, many of the returns were invalid. About 60 – 70% of the returns would be diagnosed with a ‘no trouble found’ finding from yours truly, and as you can see, it was none of my fault. There’s nothing I could do about it, because I couldn’t control what people choose to return to us.

But my then senior (superior actually) didn’t seem to think so. He must have thought I had the supernatural ability to mindfuck the customers to not send us too many stuff that are not defective. So, he conveniently set a goal for me and my group – to achieve less than 50% of ‘no trouble found’ rate on customer returns. I tried to protest over the dumbass idea, but the guy riposted with a crude remark that it was necessary to gauge our ‘competency level’ (the fucked up notion that we’re too incompetent to duplicate the defects customers reported) and refused to discuss any further.

So in order to illustrate how fucking dumb the idea was, I took a plier and showed it to my senior, and told him that a plier’s gonna be all I need to achieve that given goal, and even surpass it easily. How? Simple: Each time I get a ‘no trouble found’ merchandise, I’d use a plier to fuck it up bad and voila! It becomes a defect instantly. The cause? Physical damage to the board – blame it on freight handling, case closed. That way, I could steadily control my workload and my given objective, just with a fucking plier. Well, he still imposed on the plan though, maybe to not look bad in front of his direct reports. But he never really emphasized on needing us to achieve it after that.

That’s how the ‘Plier Solution’ came to be. I’ve implemented many ‘Plier Solutions’ in my working life before, and gotten shitloads of recognition for them – simply because the people who set the rules, aren’t really that fucking smart in the first place. *Snickers*

This post is dedicated to the ladies.

douche.bag [doosh.bag]
- noun (Slang)
Someone who has surpassed the levels of jerk and asshole, however not yet reached fucker or motherfucker.
[source: Urban Dictionary]

And this person could be your boyfriend, fiance or husband… and you could be too blind from being in love with him to realize/acknowledge that.

Having written about douchebags the other day, I felt inclined to share more about what I observed… especially to the young females out there who aren’t sure how to tell if a seemingly prospective guy is actually in fact a douchebag in disguise.

Here are some of the signs/habit most douchebags have in common… You can use this list as somekind of checklist to filter out your existing/future mates…

- Likes to lift his polo t-shirt collar up (ala dracula style)
If your guy likes to lift his polo t-shirt collar up, he’s definitely a douchebag. A normal person won’t wear his t-shirt with a lifted collar. It’s pretty much like why a girl would not wear her skirt inside out. It’s just wrong, unless if he’s a consummate douchebag.

- Likes to wear a soccer jersey everywhere he goes.
From going to the mall, to attending your mother in law’s birthday party – he dons a jersey everywhere he goes. Usually a jersey of his favorite EPL club. I might draw a lot of flak from the soccer fanatics for this but hey, deny all you want. Just know this – nobody gives a flying fuck which club you support in the EPL. It’s just so irrelevant, unless you’re a douchebag.

- Has at least one ‘horsepower increasing’ sticker on his car/motorcycle.
Usually, something like ‘NISMO’, ‘Mugen’ or Toufu shop in Japanese. The junk remains a junk but full of these stupid stickers. Other than being a douchebag having a severe self esteem problem, there’s no other explanation for this kind of behavior.

- Has worked out huge biceps and likes to show them off.
Either by wearing a sleeveless shirt/top/wifebeater, tight gayish shirt or taking off his shirt altogether in public. People like that usually have very low intelligence because they spend more time in the gym pumping irons to get their beefy physique than holding a book or doing something useful to be a better person. The show-off is just being themselves, a douchebag.

- Dyes his hair with an unnatural but subtle color
Usually shit brown to dark brown in color (so not to be too flashy), but is douchebag enough to make that step towards the dark side. A man, at any given time of his life, would not dye his hair even if it means his dog’s gonna die if he doesn’t do it.

- Dances like he’s on fire whenever he hears an upbeat music in a pub/bistro
0% percent charming, 100% embarrassing. Usually dances and glances around to see if anyone’s looking at him. If you’re unfortunate enough to have him spot you looking at his direction (even if you’re not actually looking), he’s going to flail harder and have a more intense epilepsy. Definitely a douchebag.

- Pronounces ‘zero’ as ‘jilo’.
You know what I mean. I’ve seen people who dress nicely without looking like a douchebag. But when the person pronounces ‘zero’ as ‘jilo’, it simply gives him away like a long tail of a monkey’s discerning it from being a human. Anyone who pronounces ‘zero’ as ‘jilo’, automatically qualifies as a douchebag.

- Wears leather shoes without socks, with a pair of flannel shorts.
Definitely a douchebag for wanting to look like an elite class golfer. Usually executives who do not want to be seen wearing something shoddy (shorts), but slap on a pair of leather shoes (without socks) to counter the potential misperception of being dull in fashion.

That’s roughly about it for now. Of course I won’t be able to cover everything, the list could get ridiculously long.

So if you just discovered that your partner is a douchebag by matching with the items in the list above – I’m sorry, maybe it is high time for you to knock him out with a stun gun and throw him out of the house, and get yourself a better person. You definitely deserve someone better than a goddamn douchebag. (I hope my daughter reads this someday)

There was this topic on the radio this morning during the traffic jam, on whether women want their men to look good. As usual, the DJ’s opened the topic to the listeners, and a flurry of them started to call in. I kinda expected a consistency of opinions but it was a mess. Some agreed, and some said the ladies want their men to look bad, so that he’d get less attention from other females. Some said a bunch of crap. Everyone seemed to have a different take on what it is that the women want. The truth is, though we men may have advanced far in quantum physics, we still could not really figure out for certain on what the rodless gender wants.

Well, the answer is not that simple. It’s not just about what they want, for there is no definite thing that they want in us men. It’s just not the way they work. Not that I’m saying I know the answer. I don’t (I would have won a Nobel prize if I do). But I do have a theory though, which explains most if not all of the eccentricities – the ‘inverted formula’.

Here’s how the ‘inverted formula’ works: the ladies want exactly the opposite of the present state a man is. For example, if her beau looks good and awesome, she’d want him to look sloppy. That’s because his awesomeness would make her feel insecure, and afraid of him leaving her for a better woman. He’d have to be less awesome so that she could have him all by herself. To make him less awesome, just make him sloppy and fat. Similarly, if her man’s fugly/sloppy, she would want him to look good. That’s because men like that make them look bad in front of their judgmental female friends. Like a fake Gucci bag. So to mitigate that reputation damaging potential, she’d want him to look the best at every function/occasion. Or hide him at home. And the process would repeat, after her beau changed for better/worse, she’d want him to invert his status again, until he dies. Bizzarre, but true.

This formula also works on all other things as well. Ever wondered why your girlfriend/wife always think the dinner you ordered for yourself is better than hers? The ‘inverted formula’ at work here. By reversing the formula, you’d get a more accurate picture of what the ladies want. It’s up to one’s own creativity to exploit the advantage to its most optimum level (hint: permission to go out late). It worked for me so far, even on my daughter too.

Try to assess your situation someday, you could be better off at your own choosing. ;-)

A high ranking colleague decided to leave the company and one of his honchos organized a farewell lunch for him. When I agreed to attend the lunch, another colleague became somewhat bewildered, and asked me this

“That guy is a consummate asshole, you sure you want to attend his farewell lunch?”

He made it sound as if I was going to volunteer myself to sail to Gaza.

Sure enough, the guy who is leaving isn’t exactly the nicest guy, and I believe I have also ranted quite a number of times overtly about him being the biggest asshole. But they’re just rants and I didn’t take them personal. Him being an asshole is not a reason for me to be such a dick about everything. That’s why I decided to attend the farewell lunch, to give him a sincere farewell. It’s all about being matured, diplomatic in the business and being right. This is what I replied to that bewildered colleague:

“It is just a fucking lunch. If it means to make someone feel good, and to have even the most remote possibility of him looking out for you in the future, then it is still better than you being holed up in the office doing nothing because you think he’s an asshole.”

I guess the key idea here is – not to burn your bridges. If you’re going to scorn every asshole you meet, then you have the whole world to scorn including yourself because everyone’s an asshole. If you have a bad opinion about someone, just keep it within yourself (or if you can’t help it, rant to your friends or whatever). But know that you’ve got to move on and get back into the business. You’ll never know if the very same asshole you scorn would help you get back on your feet if you ever fall one day.

Let me share a real life lesson which is pretty fucked up recently. Remember I blogged about a guy called Glottis? Well, for the record, I never liked that guy (duh). Not because he’s an asshole, but because I think he’s a queer. I feel dirty even with him standing a few feet away from me. But despite his shortcomings of being the most pondan dweeb in Company X, he’s also one of the most successful one. He’s a high ranking manager now, while I’m still a low level fucker who’s about to lose my fucking job. See?

Now comes the real deal – I’ve been searching for a job for close to 3 weeks now. 30 over applications, zero interview. One day, Glottis dropped by and offered me an opportunity to work with an MNC which is about as big as Company X. And he’s the only one who voluntarily offered! I didn’t even know how to feel grateful for him, especially after I remembered myself threatening to drag him outside the factory to beat him up like a bitch many years ago. It is a really difficult situation for me. But karma’s a fucking bitch, it has to be Glottis of all the people I have professionally acquainted with.

This goes on to prove that opportunities do not often come sugar coated for your convenience (just like how USA managed to get a draw with England) – lesson to bring home at the end of the day.

Myth#2: My notebook has performance issues because its cooling system is not efficient enough. That’s why we need those aftermarket cooling pads.

Bunch of bollocks. If your notebook works for the first week without a problem, then it is good enough – technically – for it to function for the rest of its life. There’s nothing wrong with its heat dissipation system, and you do not need a cooling pad (you know, those docking doohickeys with turbo fans purportedly be able to ‘increase your notebook efficiency’).

Most of the time, your notebook overheats and succumbs to performance issues because
a) you’re such a fucking sleazebag
b) you’re trying too hard to be cute

90% of the time, notebooks overheat because of clogged heatsink fins. Your fan sucks air from the very space you are in like a vacuum cleaner and blows out the hot air (concept of heat dissipation in a notebook), and because a notebook typically does not have an air filter, everything gets drawn in. That’s why you get clogged fins, usually with stuff like dust, lint, pubic hairs and what nots. (yes, I have seen them)

Don’t believe me? Check out the photos in the following links (I took the pictures).
Picture-1
Picture-2

When the fins get clogged, basically, the heat dissipation efficiency drops (depending on how much heat gets trapped). In the cases of both pictures above, basically nothing gets blown out. That’s why installing a cooling pad will not help. There’s only so much air gets blown out of the clogged fins. So, what happens next is quite predictable in such cases. The fan’s going to spin like mad (usually noisy), and eventually, the whole system will shut down (before everything gets toasted – it’s a safety feature). But not before experiencing major temp rise all over your keyboard and palmrest, occasionally sets off panic in some paranoid end users.

There was once, a girl in my office went around the company to look for someone to solve her notebook’s performance issues and someone in the management recommended me. It took me only 5 minutes to diagnose the whole thing with a screwdriver. She was flabbergasted when I asked her this “Say, miss… do you happen to have a purple mattress or blanket that you particularly fond of?”. She thought I was a humsup stalker or some sort until I explained the wad of purple lint cum pubic hair that was lodged in between her notebook fins, which was the main cause of the performance ‘issues’ she encountered. What an experience, eh?

So how do being a sleaze and trying to be cute come into the picture?
Aaaa… ask yourself, if the air is filled with so much dust and filth, then either you must be a consummate sleazebag for not cleaning up your workspace regularly, or you’re trying to be cute (and a moron) by using your notebook on the mattress or bed – like most teenage farts (and sadly in some cases, adults too) like to do. You know, lolling around in bed IM-ing their retarded chatroom buddies. (Just like that girl in my office with the fetish for purple mattress/blanket).

So how do we counter this? Well, you can’t prevent this from happening, but however, you can actually delay this until say, your notebook gets out-dated or something… by adhering to following suggested practices
1. Use your notebook in an air conditioned room. Preferably, one with an individual air conditioner. Individual air conditioners have built-in filters, the air is therefore cleaner. The cold air helps to reduce temperature faster, reducing the frequency of needing the fan to suck air to dissipate heat.
2. Always place your notebook in a clean, hard and flat surface (glass, marble, etc). This is to maximize the heat dissipation efficiency. Bed and soft surfaces tend to trap dust/particles, and they tend to block the vents from sucking in ample amount of air.
3. Clean your workplace at least once a day. Get your maid or wife to do it for you if you’re useless.
4. Use anti-dandruff shampoo.
5. Know your sex partners. If any of them gives you hygiene problems or even crabs, you’re going to get pubic hair loss, which might clog your heatsink fins.
6. Refrain from using your notebook near animals with fur. (Persian cats, Shihtzu dogs, Himalayan Yaks, etc)
7. If you know how to dismantle your notebook without breaking anything, you can also opt to take out your heatsink once a few months to clean it.
8. It also kinda helps if you’re bald.

Can’t think of anything more… but you get the idea.