Today I helped one of my superior spy on another colleague’s workspace in the network.  The spying does not involve any hacking or illegal activities.  All you need to know is where his files are stored in the network.  We suspect this guy is lying about his work progress.  In his status report, he claims everything is on-track, but we found out he haven’t touch his files for almost a week.  The network is the only place any work can be done relate to the project, so what has he been doing?

Spying others workspace is probably the worst way of progress tracking.  It violates the trust among colleagues.  In normal situations, I would rather have the objectives stated clearly, ask him to make a release of his work and assign someone to do the audit.  Yet, sometimes spying unavoidable and it is the last resort to get things under control.

The guy whom we spied on works in a remote office and is already laid off a few months ago.  His last day of work is the end of this month.  Somehow the managers high up think they can squeeze productivity out of him for whatever reason.  When we ask for more body, we got this guy suppose to worth two man months of human resources.  This guy is already fired, so we can’t threaten to fire him again for their poor job.  His termination package is not tied to his performance, so we cannot give any incentive for him to work hard.  Before he walk out of the door, he already got job offers with huge pay raise lining up.  Only idiots would think zombies can get any real work done.

In the old days when people buy diamonds, they have to equip themselves with vast knowledge of the jewelery so that they won’t get rip off by the shops.  They have to know how to determine the grade of the diamond, learn how to examine the rock in order to determine the fair value they should pay.  Now, diamond is getting more and more common, it has moved down market from luxury goods to commodity.  The economist’s definition of commodity is anything that is replaceable by another indistinguishable items with the same quality.  We don’t have to know anything about the physical appearance of the diamond, we just need to know how to read the certification of the diamond.  Each diamond has a bar code imprinted by laser, which corresponds to its certification.  All measurements of the diamond required to determine its value are listed in the certification.  Then price of a diamond is easily found in the open market by comparing the price of similar diamonds.  The certification system of diamond lower the trading cost of diamond.  As long as the consumers have confidence in the certification agency, there are less room for market manipulation by the middle men in diamond trade.

I wonder is it possible to set up similar certification system for jade, pearl and other jeweleries.  It is more reliable to price the jewelery with objective number than subjective impression on how good the jewelery looks.  On a second thought, why jewelery should have a price after all?  They are practically useless, so they have only psychological demands.  People want jeweleries only because other people want jeweleries, not because anyone need the jeweleries.  If jeweleries are just a proxy for people to show off how rich they are, wouldn’t it more efficient to simply show off your net worth?  If you are rich enough, you don’t need any jeweleries, your identity ellipse whatever you wear.  If you are not that rich, why waste money on jeweleries trying to impress the lesser minds?  Why not spend the money on yourself instead?

Dr. Jacob is sitting in a large corner office, over looking the fantastic view of downtown San Diego. The CEO of Dr. Jacob’s company, Bio Research, is sitting across the desk, like a statue. Dr. Jacob was called into this unexpected meeting all in sudden.  He has any clue what is happening, but he can sense something big is coming up. His hands are sweating. He feels butterflies inside his stomach. He tries to look clam by holding his hands tight, but that only makes his hands sweat even more. The meeting room is dead quiet, he can hear the clock on the wall is ticking.  tick-tick-tick. The few seconds since Dr. Jacob entered the room  seems like an eternity.  Finally the CEO breaks the silence and says:

“Dr. Jacob, I have a bad news for you. Starting today, the company will discontinue all financial support to Bobby.”

Dr. Jacob hear the words, he interrupts the CEO hastily and says, “You can’t do this to me. Bobby is my precious child. Do you remember 3 years ago when he was born, everyone in the company joined me to celebrate his birth. Do you remember you were also there on the day he speaks his first word. Do you remember last month we had a great time in his birthday party? You can not just pull the plug from Bobby.”

The CEO listens with patient, wait until Dr. Jacob is finish, and says, “Jacob, I am really sorry, I wish I can help, but there is nothing I could do. The board of directors made this decision final.”

Dr. Jacob does not give up, he try his best to convince the CEO to take back this decision. He tries to make the CEO recall the good memory he had with Bobby. He tells stories how Bobby brings love and joy to the workers in his lab. He tells how important Bobby is to him and Bobby is the meaning of his life. Dr. Jacob keeps pleading and begging, but the CEO is not moved. The CEO just states coldly that the decision has been made. The earning is not looking good this quarter and the company can not afford to spend any more money on Bobby. The CEO urges Dr. Jacob to accept the fact and move on. While Dr. Jacob is making himself heard, he is getting more and more excited. He raises his voice and starting waving his fist. At the end, Dr. Jacob is pointer his fingers to the CEO, yelling at him, and says “What you are doing is killing.  You are killing Bobby. You murderer.” At this point, the CEO feels his personal safety is in threat; he calls in the security at once, telling them “Please take this man out of my sight.” Dr. Jacob is still screaming and kicking when he is dragging out of the CEO’s office by the securities.

At last, the office door is close again, the room returns to quiet. The CEO takes a few moments to collect his thoughts. He just wonders to himself, why Dr. Jacob makes such a big deal about terminating Bobby, it is just a genetic modified dog after all.

I was early for dinner with friends, so I check out the Chapters next to restaurant to kill some time. In the front of store, there is the magazine rack. Chapters carries over 500 magazine titles, including magazine for any obscure topics you can think of. I always wonder who would have time to read all those magazines. Every week, millions of words are written in all those magazine. The articles are consumed by the readers and then forgotten. Who would care about an interview of a not so famous player of a niche sport 10 years from now? On the second thought, I consume many useless information myself too. Most people won’t be interested about the news I read on anime, toys or religions, just like I am not interested in sports. I guess we modern man like to consume junk information as we do for junk food, taste good but low on nutrition value.

Over of all those 500 magazines, out of my surprise, I couldn’t find any magazine on firearms. There is exactly one hunting magazine remotely talk about firearm, but only on rifle, not handgun. Although shooting is not a very popular sport, there are still a sizable number of gun lovers to sustain a market for gun magazines. Moreover, most of magazines are published by US, a gun loving nation, which should have lots of gun related magazine ready to import. I don’t think it is not a business decision not carrying gun magazine in Chapters. I think the executives in Chapters are trying to make moral judgment for us, censor us from receiving information that they think is wrong. It is just an example of how powerful private business erode the liberty of the society.