TGIF – Technology Is Great Except When It Isn’t

As the week winds down, we wind down with some tidbits for your information, education, health, and enjoyment.

Quotes of the Week:

Non-techie quote: Where is all the knowledge we lost with information? – T.S. Elliot

Techie quote: 640K ought to be enough for anybody. – Bill Gates, 1981

Humor Break: Today we bring you the computer wisdom of political leaders.  (All typos are sic)

“I heard there’s rumors on the Internets that we’re going to have a draft.” —President George W. Bush, during the second presidential debate

“I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why ? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially… They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”    — Senator Ted Stevens (Alaska) explaining how the Internet works (2006).

“Reading, Pa., county controller Judith Kraines complained at a commissioners’ meeting in January about having to type letters and do other business on a typewriter because her computer was old and no one had been able to get it to work for two years.  ‘If we had a computer’, she said, ‘letters would go out faster’. Three days later, she announced that the computer she was complaining about in fact had not been plugged in to any electrical outlet and that when the plug was inserted and the computer was turned on, it worked fine.”   

Stat of the Week:  “At least 2 out of 5 college students and young employees say they’d accept a lower-paying job over one that paid more if the position offered greater flexibility on access to social media, the ability to work from various locations, and what type of mobile phone employees can use on the job, according to a survey commissioned by Cisco of more than 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 countries. Flexibility on these issues will be important in determining which companies will land the next wave of talent, Cisco says.”

Action Tip: If you are over 30 years of age and you want to stay tech savvy, you have a couple of choices.   First try and catch a 16 year old and ask them to explain what’s new, or second,  at least keep the new Tech Terms Computer Dictionary close at hand.  (Hint – if you think JSON is a boy’s name, you need this free Dictionary)

Volunteering: Next week is Thanksgiving in the USA.  If you live in the USA how about giving up a few hours to help feed the homeless.  See Volunteer Match.
[tags]techie, tech savvy, talent retention, computer wisdom, computer humor, computer quotes, volunteers for thanksgiving, envisia, envisia learning, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.