24/10/2005
It may have taken more than three years, but I've finally made it. This past week, I've been registering a daily average of 250 visits to my site. Yes boys and girls, that's two hundred and fifty individual netizens dropping in on Shtikman.com every 24 hours. At long last, I'm famous on the internet. I have to admit though, most of these consist of people looking for the Kanye West and Questlove mixes. But it's all good. More internet traffic = more exposure for my own mixes = more popularity = better social life = getting laid. That's how it works, right?
So in honour of my new found fame and acclaim, I give you ...
"Mass Distraction Sessions Vol. 10 – The Spazz Jazz Mix"
Girlfriend thinks Norah Jones is the best?
Two words. Spazz Jazz.
Want to impress some friends who're coming over but don't have an impressive record collection?
Two words. Spazz Jazz.
Tried every detergent but still can't get that stain off your pants?
Two words. Spazz Jazz.
So download now and see improvements in your life INSTANTLY!
8/10/2005
"Office poli-ticks"
Here's the deal. In my office, we only have a single common PC with a broadband connection. One, so we can manage our internet usage, two, cos it's safer to physically separate our local network – which involves the accounting and sales systems – from virus threats and three, cos no one really needs to use the internet anyway. Most of our orders still come in by phone and fax. We also only have one email account, which means that all manner of digital correspondence goes through this one email address. While I am able to access the internet wirelessly from my own laptop, I still check company email through the common PC, so I use it more often than everyone else in the office.
So we receive loads of emails everyday advertising corporate training courses for everything from improving your telephone answering skills to new engineering technologies. For some reason, someone was looking through the emails today and decided to conveniently leave this particular message open on the screen:
'THE HIGH PERFORMANCE MANAGER: Inspiring Managers To Achieve Beyond Expectations'.
Also conveniently, the message was scrolled down all the way to course content no. 7, which read ' Why Managers Fail To Manage And Lead'.
Now, why should I care about this? First of all, ever since I joined my dad's company, my role is unofficially that of the manager. I say unofficially because I'm obviously a new addition to the company and for me to jump immediately into any executive position would seem odd and inappropriate. I don't even have any company position printed on my name card yet. Still, when people ask what exactly do I do in my company, I simply mention that I am the manager, and that's how my staff refers to me as well.
So, when an email message is left open like that, you can't help but think that someone is trying to tell you something. It's made all the more obvious cos a) the email wasn't even new (it was dated almost a month ago), b) there's no other manager in the company, officially or unofficially and c) this style of leaving veiled messages isn't new.
In regard to point c, only one person that I know of uses this style of 'internal corporate communication'. Previously when this person (let's call him Mr A) left email messages open, I thought nothing of it. In hindsight, I can now see that they were attempts at letting me know that he wasn't happy with certain things. Mr A had asked for a new printer, which he still hasn't received cos I haven't been able to get a good price for it. Besides, it isn't urgent, so I figured we could just wait till the next PC bargain fair to get it. However, Mr A had left a trail of breadcrumbs for me such as leaving online price lists for the latest printers open on the PC.
Also, we had talked about upgrading the PCs in the office but I put that plan on hold after considering the workflow and requirements of the staff. Coincidentally, I've also been seeing a lot of unread messages from Dell Computers detailing the latest promotions on PCs and stuff. Odd thing is, these were previously read messages.
Okay, so someone obviously isn't happy that the boss's son is sitting in the office all day in his room doing nothing but surfing the internet. Unfortunately that isn't entirely devoid of truth, but I'm still only a couple of months in and I haven't really found my way around the company. I try to help around as much as I can, but that's the best I can do for now. Still, sons of bosses make for juicy office gossip, particularly when their first language is English while everyone else speaks Chinese and they're not buying new printers and PCs for the company cos they probably never remember important office needs like these.
Yeah, I loves being the manager. Think I need to live up to my 'evil manager' role by raising my cobra-hand and firing someone on Monday. And hire a young female personal secretary as my 'laptop device' (cigar not included). And pay for drinks in clubs using company checks.
Replies:
Sock puppet
a jazzy jacket for a snake
somewhere to keep your pet hamster between its death and burial
action man sleeping bag
designated driver
6/10/2005
Aah ... doesn't every man dream of meeting her?
4/10/2005
Mixesezes for download! Don't worry, it's not one of mine.
For those of you who were lucky enough to catch the recent Questlove mix on BBC Radio 1, well, you have no business here. On the other hand, those of you who missed out on it (even though the mix was available as an online stream for a whole week after the actual live broadcast – where were you?) should thank your Lucky Strikes that it's available for download here! Yeah, I know! Sometimes I can't believe how smart I am either. But be quick though – I'll be deleting it sometime at the beginning of the 30th century so get it while you can.
In other news, you can now post comments on all my mixes! That's right, with the advent of the internets and the latest in digital brickbat technology, you no longer need to keep your thoughts about Mass Distraction Sessions Vol. 8 all to yourself. Now you can tell the whole world how boring it was!
Because my knowledge of music is unsurpassed, I've gone through the original Questlove tracklisting and corrected some gross errors myself ('Bebble Brison' should be 'Peabo Bryson', 'David Macmallum' should be 'David McCallum', 'Imaga Mall' should be 'Ahmad Jamal' etc). If you have any corrections to suggest, you can always post a comment.
