My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, 'What's on TV?'
I said, 'Dust.'
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She said, 'I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.'
I bought her a scale.
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace expensive...so, I took her to a gas station.
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver's license to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.
The woman said, 'Unbutton your shirt'. So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, 'That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me' and she processed my Social Security application.
When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.
She said, 'You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.'
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.
My wife asked, 'Do you know her?'
'Yes,' I sighed, 'She's my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since.'
'My God!' says my wife, 'who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?'
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took my order first.
"I'll have the strip steak, medium rare, please."
He said, "Aren't you worried about the mad cow?""
Nah, she can order for herself."
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A woman is standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She is not happy with what she sees and says to her husband, 'I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.'
The husband replies, 'Your eyesight's damn near perfect.'
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A man and a woman were asleep like two innocent babies.
Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the morning, a loud noise came from outside.
The woman, bewildered, jumped up from the bed and yelled at the man 'Holy crap. That must be my husband!'
So the man jumped out of the bed; scared and naked jumped out the window. He smashed himself on the ground, ran through a thorn bush and to his car as fast as he could go.
A few minutes later he returned and went up to the bedroom and screamed at the woman, 'I AM your husband!'
The woman yelled back, 'Yeah, then why were you running?'
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage.
I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour.
The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.
I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed.
I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, 'The weather out there is terrible.'
My loving wife of 10 years replied, 'Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?'
And then the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I asked my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary? "
It warmed my heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said.
So I suggested, "How about the kitchen?"
And that's when the fight started...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My wife and I are watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?"
"No," she answered.
I then said, "Is that your final answer?"
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying "Yes."
So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."
And that's when the fight started...
<stolen from Yahoo! Finance> Now for a few words that may give you some guidance on life as it is. Last week, my pal Mike Long and I had dinner at a Thai place in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Then we walked one long, steep block to Barnes & Noble so I could buy a few photo books of D.C. to send to my friends in California. The store was almost empty, possibly because of a powerful rain that was falling. I found several lovely books and brought them to the sales counter, where two young salesclerks, a man and a woman, were lounging. I told them I wanted to buy the books and have them mailed or otherwise sent to three addresses in California. Deer, Meet Headlights The young clerks looked worried. "We don't know how to do that," one of them said. "You don't ever send books?" I asked. "Hey, we're students at George Washington University," the young woman said. "We don't know how to do much." "But surely other customers have wanted to send books," I said. They shrugged. "Can you call over a manager?" I asked. "Yes," the young woman said eagerly. "Yes." Soon, a pretty young woman with short hair appeared. To make a long story short, she was indeed the manager, but she didn't know how to send the books, either. In fact, even after I'd carefully spelled out all of the addresses, they couldn't figure out how to send anything. Worse yet, just the effort "froze" the checkout computer such that it couldn't even let me buy the books to mail myself. When I wanted to buy some note cards with photos by the great Fred Maroon, they could only take cash and not give me any change. No one ever expressed any apologies. The Nakedly Indifferent Civil Servant Now, bear in mind, this is in a time when people are supposedly suffering financially and need jobs. As Mike and I walked back to my apartment, I said, "That was amazing. Those people didn't know how to do a basic transaction like mailing books." "No," he corrected me, "they don't want to do it. They didn't even really try very hard. They're college students. That means they don't care at all. They're getting paid whether they send the books or not. They're like civil servants -- only civil servants have a good attitude, and these guys have a poor attitude." "You're right," I said. When I got home, I went online and in five minutes had ordered and shipped the books. No fuss, no muss. Not a good omen for Barnes & Noble. Piecework Nation After that, I called information to get the telephone number for a luxury hotel in Chicago. The operator couldn't find the number -- I got it online, too. Then I called the hotel. The clerk at the front desk couldn't find my reservation. I retrieved it online. The next day in Chicago, I spoke to a gathering of physicians at a convention. After the speech, they told me that their No. 1 problem (after Medicare reimbursements) was finding workers who were actually willing to learn and work. "It's not a case of workers begging for jobs," said the man next to me at a post-speech lunch. "We're begging for qualified workers." There's a point to be gleaned from this, and my friend Mike made it well after our debacle at Barnes & Noble: "I wish every worker in America had to be a freelancer at selling or writing or painting or carpentry or computer repair or law or something for two years. I wish Americans could have a period in their lives when they only got paid for what they sold and produced. It would do this country world of good." Whistling Past the Graveyard There's another point here. First, it's true that we may well be in a recession. I didn't think it would happen, but a combination of Wall Street idiocy and greed, Federal Reserve tardiness and caution, and a deluge of fear dumped on consumers by the media may have done it. But even in a recession, there's always a shortage of talented, hardworking people in every field. Be one and, even if the recession gets really bad, you can whistle past the graveyard. You may have to move locations. You may have to learn new skills. But a willingness to work will get you everywhere you want to be. And if you aren't willing to work, I don't see why those of us who are should bail you out.
We've written more than any other publication about the tension that existed between Tucci and Greene. Such bad blood seemed inevitable once EMC decided to offer part of VMware up in an initial public offering. You've got the stodgy parent company trudging along with a crepe-flat share price, while the young upstart soars into the stratosphere. In fact, at one point not long after the IPO, it looked as if VMware's market capitalization would shoot past that of EMC. Since it still held more than 85 per cent of VMware, EMC benefited from its virtualization arm's gains. Its share price finally started moving up after years of languishing. Thing is, it was Greene's team and not Tucci's that was to thank for the surge. EMC came to look like a hindrance. It was the boring disk seller trying to hold onto to a piece of the future with all its might. Tucci must have hated being put in that position. He'd driven EMC to consistent double-digit growth, but no one cared. And then here comes this hippie wind-surfer from California who receives all of the accolades and pats on the back for her business acumen. People often underestimate Greene. This is understandable to a degree. She's rather short. She's not a bombastic type in public. She comes off as much more of an engineer than a ruthless capitalist. She's a nerd who happened to end up running a company. Those inside of VMware know a much different Greene. She's a hard-driving perfectionist who loves nothing more than to get her way. Employees have talked to us about going into meetings with Greene and crawling into their foxholes, hoping to avoid being struck by criticism or worse, a tirade. We suspect that Tucci became less enamored with Greene's style as VMware's fortunes rose. He would have very little leverage over the firebrand in Palo Alto. She was responsible for making him look good. She wanted too much control of this VMware gem. She caused too many headaches. People kept thinking maybe she should have the EMC CEO post. Ultimately, she had to go. Lucky for Tucci, investors, as they are wont to do, set unrealistic expectations for VMware. The company had doubled revenue every year since its birth. Why expect that party to end just because VMware's revenue had swelled past $1bn? Why think that Microsoft entering the market with a server virtualization product tied to Windows would harm VMware's fortunes? So, with VMware failing to meet these insane goals, Tucci found the opportunity to justify Greene's dismissal as a business decision when it's anything but. Greene always knew what was coming. That's why she drove her team so hard to build out an incredible number of management products over the past few years. It's these products that surround VMware's core hypervisor and which should provide the revenue for VMware in the future. VMware may have grown a bit full of it itself after the IPO, but it never turned complacent. The software maker continued to pump out product after product and to use its new found wealth for acquisitions and finding talent. We suspect VMware will lose some of that focus now that Microsoft ex Paul Maritz has tumbled into the CEO post. Not because Maritz is an underwhelming leader but because VMware will have lost that spark and singular passion that only CEO/founders are usually able to provide. (VMware's chief scientist Mendel Rosenblum, also Greene's husband and company co-founder, can't be long for the company either.) It's nothing less than shocking that Tucci would push to remove Greene just as VMware needed her most. Here comes Microsoft with Hyper-V finally ready, and you're going to rattle the whole ship because of a personality conflict? Er, VMware may have tweaked its revenue forecast for 2008 to be "modestly below" previous guidance of 50 per cent growth. Few executives of multi-billion dollar companies usually get fired for 49 per cent growth, especially with an imploding worldwide economy in the background. But why let such ideas get in the way, Joe? Let's just wave Greene, 30 per cent of VMware's share price and 10 per cent of EMC's share price away because the short lady was kinda hard to get along with sometimes.
Stolen from The Register.
Comment By firing VMware chief Diane Greene, EMC's top dog Joe Tucci has sent a message to investors that his personal likes and dislikes come before their broader interests. That's not exactly what you want to see from an executive who has already done so very little for investors over the past five years.
Reporter: Senator, Maya Rodriguez at the CBS station out of New Orleans. My understanding is you have voted twice against the creation of a commission to investigate the levee failures in New Orleans. And my question is, why have you voted against that? McCain: I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on the ground. I’ve met with the governor. I’m not familiar with exactly what you said, but I’ve been as active as anybody in efforts to restore the city. Lieberman, Jan. 24, 2006: There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation we have a responsibility to do. McCain: I also voted against one of the bills that came down that was loaded with pork barrel projects that had nothing to do with New Orleans too. It had billions for projects and programs that had nothing to do with the recovery of the city of New Orleans. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers: It doesn't bode well for Senator Obama's pledges to run a campaign of hope and change when on the first day of the general election he's launching the same tired negative attacks that the American people are so sick and tired of. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers (continuing): As Sen. McCain said, he wasn't familiar with the specific votes the questioner was asking about. Instead he was speaking to his strong support for the Homeland Security Committee's comprehensive, bipartisan investigation of Hurricane Katrina, which was already fully underway when these other proposals were suggested.
McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote, members of both parties were complaining that the White House was refusing requests by Senate investigators for information.
The McCain campaign accused the Obama campaign of "tired negative attacks" for pointing out and documenting McCain’s gaffe.
McCain did, as the reporter said, twice vote against legislation that would have created an independent commission, much like the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the government's role in preparedness for and response to the hurricane. Here's the exchange:
The reporter was referring to votes on an amendment offered by Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2005 and 2006 to set up an independent commission to look into the government's actions regarding Katrina. The commission would have been made up of non-federal-government employees, appointed by the president and Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress. Republicans defeated both attempts, with yeas and nays cast completely along party lines.
McCain lined up with his party at a time when the White House was being accused on all sides of withholding information from the Senate.
Before the second vote, on Feb. 2, 2006, Clinton charged: "We are seeing the administration withholding documents, testimony, and information from the ongoing investigations by the House and Senate."
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who co-chaired a Senate investigation into Katrina by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, argued against the measure, saying her committee "has been conducting a thoroughly comprehensive, bipartisan, and thorough investigation into the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina." But about a week earlierCollins had been telling reporters that it was "completely inappropriate" for the White House to forbid government officials from talking to the committee and that "the White House has gone too far in restricting basic information about who called whom on what day."
The other co-chair of that Senate investigation, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, more forcefully chastised the White House and other federal agencies for withholding documents, refusing interviews and derailing the Senate's work.
Lieberman voted for the creation of an independent commission, both times. He was later defeated for his party's nomination in 2006 but won reelection to the Senate as an independent and is now backing McCain.
We don't know whether an independent commission would have gotten more information from the Bush White House, and we take no position on whether creating such a commission was appropriate or needed. But McCain's statement that he "supported every investigation" is false. The record shows McCain lined up with his party as it circled the wagons to defend the Bush administration against a more aggressive probe of what went wrong before and after Katrina.
McCain suggested that he was merely voting against wasteful spending. He told the Louisiana reporter that he voted against "one of the bills" because it was riddled with pork.
The Clinton amendments, however, would have provided $3 million for the investigation but no funds for anything else.
McCain's gaffe put his campaign on the defensive. A spokesman issued a statement accusing Sen. Barack Obama of "launching ... tired negative attacks."
That referred to an e-mail that the Obama campaign sent to reporters. It said: "Whether he simply wasn't aware of his voting record again or he was intentionally misleading the people of Louisiana, John McCain certainly isn't offering us 'leadership you can believe in.' " Other than that, the e-mail simply quoted McCain and gave the dates and Senate numbers of the votes.
The McCain campaign also said that in his response to the reporter he was"speaking to his strong support" for the Homeland Security Committee probe:
It's true that McCain did tell the reporter that he wasn't "familiar with exactly what you said." However, his response to the reporter made no specific mention of the Senate investigation. Furthermore, the Senate investigation was not "fully underway" when the idea of an independent commission was suggested. The first vote on Sept. 14, 2005, was held the same day the committee opened its first hearing.
-by Lori Robertson
My Groups
-
Let's Run! Updated: Yesterday
-
Macintosh Updated: 5 days ago
-
apple, inc. Updated: Oct 29, 2009
