Auburn University is probably best known
for its football team. While that is nice, they count among their alumni
author Tim Dorsey, who writes some of the most twisted, hilarious, and
entertaining books concerning a serial killer running around the state
of Florida. Another writer has emerged from Auburn, Prioleau Alexander,
and his first novel is You
Want Fries With That: A White-Collar Burnout Experiences Life at Minimum
Wage, a novel as twisted and
hilarious as the best Dorsey. But while Dorsey works the fiction aisle
with success, this novel is an extremely fun non-fiction book.
Contents:
Acknowledgements
Prologue: White Collar, Short Leash
The Pizza Man Cometh
We All Scream, Eventually
Why the Roofer Wants to Kick Your Ass
Good Things Come in Big Boxes
10 ccs of Sanity, Stat . . .
You Want Fries With That?
Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
Epilogue
At age forty-one, Prioleau Alexander left a highly lucrative job in advertising
and marketing. While thinking about all of things that his wife needed
him to do, Alexander decided that he needed a job to get out of the house.
But he didn't want to get back into advertising and marketing. With no
other skills, he decides that minimum wage jobs give him the best opportunity
for employment and to stay out of management. Each chapter begins with
a little history of the position, provided by Google searches. How much
ice cream, pizza, or hamburgers does the average American consume in a
year? How did the Bog Box stores get started? Through the magic of Google,
Alexander provides you with those answers. And then he launches into his
job hunting and interview processes. Finally, we experience him scooping
ice cream, delivering pizza, working a construction site as a laborer,
and more. All delivered with keen insight, pithy commentary, and, quite
often, a large dose of humor.
The premise, alone, lends itself to
hilarious shenanigans; a 41 year old attempts to find work at a minimum
wage job. Imagine such a person walking into a fast-food restaurant and
asking the person behind the counter for an application. Or walking into
a local ice cream store. You get the idea. One chapter that really hit
home for me, and provided the most laughs, is the dealing with the Big
Box stores. I was assisting my son with a job search when we rolled into
a well known Big Box. Sitting at the job kiosk, I had similar thoughts
as Alexander as we slogged through 30-some pages of on-line employment
application. And the results for my son were the same as for Alexander;
No job offer. In addition to the actual job search and work, Alexander
provides some keen insight into the people that work at minimum wage jobs.
Though rife with humor, there are areas where he shows the human side of
these jobs. They are not heavy handed, but do lend a nice balance to the
comedy. Further, you may actually regard the person behind the counter
in a new light. His Epilogue wraps the book up nicely; I think that Alexander
has found what he was looking for. An excellent novel from a first time
writer; it moves quickly, is edited very well, and leaves the reader looking
forward to another book from this excellent writer.
IBM Adds 200 Partners to LotusLive Cloud Services
Fri, Mar 19th 2010 6:10p Gregg Eldred It appears that IBM Lotus may be striking at Microsoft and its end-of-life for Essential Business Server with a recent press release announcing 200 partners who "plan to sell LotusLive."
IBM today announced more than 200 partners are planning to sell to their customers LotusLive cloud services. The news comes in just two months since the introduction of the LotusLive partner program as evidence of increasing migration to the cloud for collaboration capabilities.
. . . As part of today's ne [read] Keywords: collaboration
foundations
ibm
lotus
database
db2
microsoft
server
A Dumb Thing That Gets Me Emotional - Marine Corps Advertising
Mon, Mar 15th 2010 4:00p Gregg Eldred For the most part, a lot of advertising just flows over me without eliciting a response. However, when I see an ad for the Marine Corps, there is a response, usually a very emotional one. Sitting in a semi-darkened movie theatre this weekend with family, Number One Son sitting next to me, this ad appeared on the screen:
Green Zone isn't supposed to be a tear jerker, but it started out that way. *sigh* [read] Keywords: application
98
Selecting the Right Smartphone - Flowchart
Mon, Mar 15th 2010 11:50a Gregg Eldred After reading Guy Wakely's post concerning the selection of a new smartphone, I found this flowchart that may provide some assistance. Funny, but Palm is not represented. [read] Keywords:
150
ITWire: Big Lego Blackberry built
Sun, Mar 14th 2010 11:50a Gregg Eldred Lego artist/sculpter/genius Nathan Sawaya has created the ultimate in geek toys, a giant Lego RIM Blackberry Tour 9360 complete with working LCD screen. The 'artwork' stands at about 1.5 metres high and follows one of his previous projects, a similarly giant Lego iPhone. Clearly Sawaya has no particular loyalty to either.
More > The photo accompanying the article: [read] Keywords: blackberry
iphone
rim
IBM Whitepaper: Administering IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 servers for beginners
Thu, Mar 11th 2010 10:40p Gregg Eldred IBM Lotus has published a whitepaper on administering Domino 8.5. From the abstract:
This white paper provides a comprehensive overview of how to administer IBM Lotus® Domino®, explaining the fundamental components and terminology so that new administrators can feel familiar with the product. Specifically, we explain key features and functionalities such as the Notes.ini file, the Data Directory, IDs, server commands and documents, and server activities. Also included are discussions of [read] Keywords: admin
administration
domino
ibm
lotus
notes
server
Redbook: Best Practices for Building Web Applications for Domino 8.5.1
Tue, Mar 9th 2010 11:00p Gregg Eldred This IBM Redbooks wiki has the following objectives:
Provide guidance on Best Practices for Domino Web Development, with emphasis on the new XPages design element. This wiki introduces the key new features of XPages and discusses how and why these features are meaningful within the context of Domino Web Development.
Provide hands-on tutorials and sample code, which give you the opportunity to work with XPages and to understand the improvements in Domino 8.5 Web application development. As a fou [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
xpages application
applications
development
wiki
133
The Husband Store
Tue, Mar 9th 2010 10:10p Gregg Eldred A store that sells new husbands has opened in New York City , where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:
You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!
So, a woman goes to t [read] Keywords:
