Stray Hawkeye

Sort of like an internet party, but with chemicals.  Dorky and a bit nsfw:

No idea where these came from originally, but I came across them on a friend’s Facebook page and they made me laugh a lot, so I thought I’d pass them on.

Top Ten Things You Shouldn’t Say at a Consulting Interview

10. I’m a t-shirt and jeans kind of person.
9. Do you pay overtime?
8. I hate flying.
7. I’m useless without ten hours of sleep a night.
6. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
5. Do you cover rental cars for collision?
4. Stanford taught me that working in teams is great for slackers.
3. I think three letter acronyms are for people too stupid to remember whole phrases.
2. Two words: family first.
1. Call it what you want, it still means firing people.

Top Ten Things a Consultant Shouldn’t Tell a Client
10. That was my first guess as well, but then I really thought about it.
9. You should see the hotel I’m staying at.
8. Hey, I just realized that I was in third grade when you started working here.
7. I like this office space. I’ll have them put me in here when you’re gone.
6. My rental car looks nicer than that junker you’re driving.
5. Sure it’ll work; I learned it in business school.
4. So what do you need me to tell you?
3. Of course it’s right; the spreadsheet says so.
2. I could just tell you the answer, but we’re committed to a three month project.
1. What are you, stupid?

Top Ten Ways To Know You’re Dating/Married To A Consultant
10. Referred to the first month of your relationship as a “diagnostic period”.
9. Talks to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.
8. Takes a half-day at the office because, “Sunday is your day.”
7. Congratulates your parents for successful value creation.
6. Tries to call room-service from the bedroom.
5. Ends any argument by saying, “let’s talk about this off-line.”
4. Celebrates anniversary by conducting a performance review.
3. Can’t be trusted with the car – too accustomed to beating up rentals.
2. Valentine’s Day card has bullet points.
1. Refers to lovemaking as a “win-win”.

Top Ten Ways to Know You’ve Got the Consulting Bug
10. Can’t stop using words that don’t exist.
9. Worried that he who dies with the most frequent-flyer miles wins.
8. Use so much jargon in conversation, friends think you’re speaking a foreign language.
7. Constant urge to give advice on subjects you know nothing about.
6. Always-hyphenating-words-that-don’t-need-to-be-hyphenated.
5. Keep seeing bullet points everywhere.
4. Can fit the thematic undercurrents of War and Peace into a two-by-two matrix.
3. Tired of having a social life beyond work.
2. A two-page story in Business Week is all it takes to make you an expert.
1. Firmly believe that an objective viewpoint means more than any real work experience.

Top Ten Things You’ll Never Hear from a Consultant
10. You’re right; we’re billing way too much for this.
9. Bet you I can go a week without saying “synergy” or “value-added”.
8. How about paying us based on the success of the project?
7. This whole strategy is based on a Harvard business case I read.
6. Actually, the only difference is that we charge more than they do.
5. I don’t know enough to speak intelligently about that.
4. Implementation? I only care about writing long reports.
3. I can’t take the credit. It was Ed in your marketing department.
2. The problem is, you have too much work for too few people.
1. Everything looks okay to me.

Are You A Prostitute Or A Consultant?
1. You work very odd hours.
2. You are paid a lot of money to keep your client happy.
3. You don’t necessarily have to put out to be good at your job.
4. You develop a close relationship with your co-workers.
5. You spend a majority of your time in a hotel room.
6. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended.
7. You are not proud of what you do.
8. You wear out shoes quickly.
9. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded.
10. It’s difficult to have a family.
11. The client can roll you off.
12. You have no job satisfaction.
13. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living.
14. People ask you, “What do you do?” and you can’t explain it.
15. Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate.
16. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money.
17. When you are with the client reality is unimportant. The important thing is how well you can draw the client into the fantasy you are creating.
18. When you leave to go see a client, you look great, but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM).
19. You are rated on your “performance” in an excruciating ordeal.
20. Even though you get paid the big bucks, it’s the client who walks away smiling.
21. The client always thinks your “cut” of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you.
22. All of your colleagues profess to be the best, so you never really feel adequate

So I’ve been batting this one around in my head for a while, and then I read this article (very, very hyperbolic and one sided,  but still fairly informative none the less), which set me off a bit to finally write this up.  The idea (really sort of 2 ideas together) still definitely has issues, but it’s at least something to think about.  This one’s admittedly equal parts idea and rant, and parts are half joking, though also half not.

Now, in an ideal world, politicians would actually care about representing the views of the people who they are supposed to represent. No US Senator from Minnesota would vote for a bill unless he thought that the people of Minnesota would support it. No Minnesota State Congressman would vote for a piece of legislation unless he thought that the people in his specific district would support it. They would do frequent opinion polls among the people they represent (not national polls) on relevant issues.

However, I think we all know that not how things work. If a drug company promises some money to a campaign in exchange for slightly stricter intellectual property laws, it will probably go through. If the head of the TSA has a side business that has clients that sell body scanners, we’re told we need body scanners in every airport to stay safe. If the steel industry wants higher tariffs to make higher profits to have more money to donate to politicians, the circle of political life goes on.

While there are many, many groups I can give money to as an individual in order to try to elect a given politician, there’s not much I can do to influence him/her after the election until they start making campaign promises the next time around. In short, while companies and interest groups can influence politicians while in office, the average citizen only really comes into discussion around election time.

So, here’s my idea – political bounties (for clarity, so I don’t have the FBI knocking at my door, I’m referring to bounties on laws getting passed/repealed, not on politicians’ heads). Now you may be saying, wait, you want to just buy laws? Well, yes. It basically works that way now for companies, I just want to be more blunt about the government representing the money rather than representing the people. Aside from that, as it stands, companies don’t just have the same rights as individuals, they have more rights.  While an actual person can only donate up to a specific amount of money, corporations basically can spend whatever they want.  I’m just proposing equal rights here.  However, the real key to this idea is that the bounties are only awarded to a politician (or more specifically their reelection fund) AFTER they accomplish what the bounty is for, and that they will be for very, very specific changes.

For instance, I think it’s stupid that I can’t buy beer on Sunday in Minnesota, and I’d like to see that changed. I don’t care which politician introduces the legislation, or what party they’re from. I just want to be able to go grab a bottle of wine for diner on Sunday. So, if this were all set up, I would start a political bounty for legalizing the sale of alcohol on Sunday in Minnesota, and I would contribute a few dollars. And anyone else who thought it was a good idea could also contribute a few bucks. The key here is that the bounty continues to sit and grow until someone introduces a piece of legislation that passes to change the law. No one gets the money until the law is changed.  Basically, we shift the focus for individual campaign contributions from campaign promises to realized results. This would also work for non-incumbents, they could take out loans to campaign on, and pay them back when they got some results and got bounties (or not get elected and go bankrupt I suppose).

Another sort of complimentary idea for this would be that we shut down all direct campaign contributions. Instead, each citizen is allocated $100 (arbitrary number, adjust as you see fit). The $100 comes from tax money, so actually the rich are contributing way more, and the poor way less, but they all get equal say, thus leveling the field some across economic groups that way. Also, I say allocated rather than given because you don’t actually get this money, this money is held by the government and you instruct them (probably via a form on some website) on which campaign to contribute it to and how. This could have a short list of options, such as making the contribution conditional on specific campaign promise being fulfilled. For instance, $50 to Person X unconditionally, and $50 split equally among all politicians who vote to repeal the Patriot Act, if the repeal succeeds. You could also contribute it an interest group, who could then use it to advertise about a specific issue rather than for a specific politician. The key here is that this would be the only money they would be allowed to use. This would help to make it so the government represent (or at least plays to) the people instead of corporations, and it would give all citizen equal say in their government (or again, equal influence over the election).  Politicians would be strictly banned from using any other funds in their campaigns.

The obvious problem with this part, is that you basically have to limit free speech in order to keep companies and rich people from buying their own advertising. And it sort of presupposes that elections are decided by how much advertising you can do, rather than what people actually think, which gets a bit to the heart of the issue that most people know almost nothing about politics, but are still responsible for choosing politicians. In order to make it manageable, you would also have to limit the list of conditions that you could apply to your contribution. Maybe you could make it so the $100 can be payed out at your will throughout the elected politician’s term?

There’s also the elephant in the room that any change like this would have to be put in place by, you guessed it, politician.  And we’ve already covered where they currently get incentives from.

Ugh.  Politics makes my head hurt, and make me nauseous. This is why I haven’t had much on here about it for a while, and will probably continue that way for a while.

What you have 3 days after you shave a Snuffleupagus.

The shiba inu puppy cam is back with a new litter of fuzzy little balls of cute:

Online TV Shows by UstreamIf that doesn’t make you smile and melt a little, you need help.

If the embedded video doesn’t work, try here.

Via Cute Overload and BoingBoing. Previously featured on Stray Hawkeye with the previous litter here.

In an effort to keep this blog one step cooler than your grandmother, I made a Facebook account for Stray Hawkeye, located here (let me know if the link doesn’t work, it should be visible to everyone).  Okay, so it’s possible your grandmother is still cooler, but I’m trying here.

There’s not much on the Facebook page yet.  Like basically nothing.  However, I do have a couple ideas for it when I get some time, and I’ll point it out here when I get those set up.  More organizing a couple of events and that sort of thing than moving any actual content over there.

On the off chance you were one of the people who came across the page I had set up on Facebook for the site before, I deleted that one because a few things weren’t set up the way I wanted and it wouldn’t let me change it.  Sorry about that.  You can fan the new one now though.  And I think (not sure) that you can share photos and links and stuff on it too.  Again, let me know if you have trouble.

Also, as you may have been able to tell from my last post, I set up a YouTube channel for Stray Hawkeye as well, located here.  I know the video quality isn’t particularly great – they were all taken with the video mode on my seven or eight year old digital camera, which is old enough that having video on a camera was a pretty cool new feature.  Plus, I don’t have a lot of experience with shooting video, so basically what I’m saying is that they’re about what you’d expect on YouTube, minus the really horrible comments sections full of hatred and typos, at least so far.  I have a few ideas for some more videos, but admittedly they’re near the bottom of the priority list and will be pretty time consuming, so they might be quite a while.

This was going to be a brief little post of a couple of things from the Orange Bowl / Miami trip.  However, instead of being brief and little, it somehow got really, really long.  I thought about breaking it into a few more little posts, but I figure at this point most of you are probably sick of hearing about my vacation, and it’s already close to a month after the fact, I so I figure I’ll get it all out of the way here in one last post on the subject.  Some topics covered – compare and contrast Iowa fans and the locals, tangent on advertising, pictures of some Hawkeye fashions, a lengthy deconstruction of fan turn out / ticket sales for the two teams, various non-dino game pictures, and some videos I took along the way.

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The contrast between the Hawkeye fans the the natives of South Beach was both awesome and hilarious (to me at least). (Note that this whole description engages in huge, broad, sweeping generalization to try to illustrate the point, there’s lots of exceptions, but we’re going for a general feeling here.)

South Beach and it’s residents seem to see themselves as (and may well be, I don’t keep track of these things) the center of fashion and stylishness for America and possibly the world.  They’re all very, very well dressed in whatever the latest style is.  At the same time that this would probably make them noticeable anywhere else, in South Beach, everyone is so in tune with the latest fashions, that they all end up looking basically the same (at least to my uncultured eyes).  It’s almost like there’s a dress code / uniform for the whole area, which probably changes about every two weeks.  They also seem to tend to be very fit (and dress to show it (or maybe cover it up where lacking)) and very tan.  I also don’t usually tend to notice plastic surgery, but wow, plastic people everywhere in South Beach.  There was also the highest concentration of Ethiopian refugee grade skinny girls that I’ve ever seen in one place.  Like walking skeletons in mini-skirts.  Super gross, but still trying to show it off.

In addition, it was also *by Miami standards* really cold while we were there.  Highs around 60-65, and lows around 40.  Yeah, I know, it was about 5 (above) when I got on the plane to go down, there was frozen puke (New Year’s morning) at the bus stop on the way to the airport.  But 40′s are apparently near record lows for them.  The natives were bundled up, in layers and layers and layers.  Sweaters, stocking caps, gloves, the whole bit.

They also all seemed to be rather serious and self-conscious.  Not in an unconfident way, just a being very aware of how they look and how others are looking at them.  And, perhaps because we were in an area pretty heavy in shops and restaurants, so lots of service industry people, they tended to all be in their 20′s and 30′s.  Though that could be the plastic surgery talking.

In contrast to that were the Iowa fans, who I love.  Totally on vacation, and caring about fashion and style even less than Mid-westerners normally do, which is already basically not at all.  Tigerhawks and “IOWA” on every shirt, fuck Dolce and Gabbana – our defense would kill them both, whoever they play for.  T-shirt stretched over a beer gut and stained jeans?  Sounds like an outfit to me.  XXL t-shirt on a XL frame and athletic short?  Let’s head to the beach!  It’s not that Iowa fans look bad by any means, it’s just that by and large, they couldn’t care less about designers or the latest trend.  Especially when on a vacation that centers around a sporting event.  And they’re not necessarily unfit (though, I would say on average we’ve probably got 25-50 pounds on South Beachers), but fitness for us is centered around being able to do the job at hand (usually farming) even if there is some padding over the muscle, rather than centered around looking toned at the beach.

To sum up the fitness part, I noted a few times from looking at the size and build of the Iowa fans and at the locals, that if a fight were to break out between the Iowa fans and the locals, every dollar I have or could borrow would be on the Iowa fans, and I’d gladly take 2 to 1 odds on that.

The Iowa fans also skewed more towards the 40-ish and 50-ish age range.  I would assume because that’s more of who has the resources to be able to fly down to Miami for a quick vacation.

So, needless to say, seeing the two groups mixing and passing on the street while you sat and ate was one of the more entertaining things on the trip (aside from the game of course).

The really weird part is that both groups have this same air of pride about them, but at the same time, a totally different form of it.  South Beachers have a sort of pride in appearance and their own perception of their social place at the forefront of culture and fashion.  Iowans I have a harder time analyzing, since I am one, but sort of a pride in being strong, independent, resilient, tough, caring, good people.  A sort of hereditary German pride in some sorts.

Anyway, an interesting compare and contrast while you’re sitting at a sidewalk cafe eating pizza and watching people walk by.

Now, on to some pictures.  First, this was still up in the Minneapolis airport when I flew out on the first:

Though Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Tiger Woods when he started hitting the news (and stationary objects such as trees and fire hydrants), apparently airport ads are on a bit of a slow rotation.  Also, all of their Tiger Woods posters went from sort of “eh?” to being downright insightful.  Someone also pointed out the new Accenture ads to me after I mentioned this.  Perhaps it’s just me, but when I first saw this one, I saw a rather small, blurry version like below, from a bit of a distance, and I thought to myself, “Why would they want their image to be a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica?”  That makes no sense, and I’m pretty sure there is no part of that which is the image they want to get across.

Then I realized that it’s not a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica.  Rather, it’s a bi-pedal, hunchbacked elephant on a surf board riding a crappy wave.  Because that makes waaayyyy more sense.

Anyway, back to Miami.  We were walking on the beach, and my sister pointed out this great shot:

What’s that?  It’s just a bunch of hotels on the beach you say?  Ah, look closer…

Now, I also generally think it’s sort of weird and creepy to take random picture of people you don’t know, but sometimes you just see things that are too awesome to resist sharing.

And, hell, while we’re being creepy and posting some of my favorite fan apparel (which I’m now also noticing is probably a fair example of my above statements about Iowa fans and fashion and the cultural difference with the locals, especially, especially the second one below), here’s two more.

What more can I say?

The team buses were also styling:

Now a couple of pictures which illustrate as clearly as one can the distribution of fans for the game.

Admittedly Exhibit B was taken a little while before kick off, but Exhibit A was during the game.  And here’s the seating chart for the game:

As you can see, each team’s athletic department is responsible for selling out about a quarter of the stadium.  This ensures some revenue for ticket sales for the bowl, and makes sure it feels like each team has a side.  These seats are indicated in grey in Exhibit C to illustrate that they’re not available through the Orange Bowl website, just through that team’s athletic department.  Now you may be saying, “Wait, Iowa left that many seats empty in their section?  No way!!  Well…, I guess it is a long trip, and it’s a recession and all, and they might have had their hopes up for the Fiesta…”.  No. No. No.

We were sitting in section 414.  Let’s orient those pictures for you:

The Iowa sections was full.  Maybe not quite 100%, but at least 85%, and probably closer to 90%.  Plus there were lots of Iowa fans like myself who bought tickets in the neutral areas between the two (the colored seats in the above pictures).  In fact, basically all the fans in the neutral areas were Iowa fans.  Not exaggerating, probably 85% of the fans in both of the neutral corners were Iowa as well.  Granted, those sections weren’t completely sold out, but they were pretty well populated.  This means that Iowa, the traveling/visiting team, with no particular tie to the Orange Bowl (the ACC does have a tie in with the Orange Bowl), sold out at least half of the stadium, and probably more like 60-65% of the seats.  Now you’re saying, “So, Georgia Tech must have sold out the other 35-40% seats?”  No.  Not at all.  See Exhibit A.  In fact, let me clarify Exhibit A a bit with…

So, Georgia Tech was tasked with selling, at minimum, 25% of the seats IN A BCS BOWL GAME.  In the picture above, I’ve circled a couple not so small holes in that 25% of the stadium.  And mind you, this was DURING THE GAME.  It’s not like these holes filled in when people came in from tailgating.  They stayed like that the whole time.   And then, there’s the elephant in the room, and it’s not even on a surf board this time.  What are those black bits?

Those are huge black tarps that were covering the upper half of basically all of the upper Georgia Tech sections.  I have no confirmation on this, but I would assume that their purpose is to make it less apparent to a TV audience that the stadium was not sold out.  This would make sense given the fan concentration just below these tarps, and the fact that they’re almost all in the Georgia Tech dedicated seating area.  Which means aside from the gaping holes circled in red that are sparse to empty, that not one single ticket was sold in the black tarp sections for the ACC CHAMPIONS to see their team compete in a BCS game BEING PLAYED THE NEXT STATE OVER.

As best I can tell, the tarps cover about 15 rows, and they’re over 14 sections, and each row is about 25 seats wide.  That means that by a back of the envelope calculation, that there were 5,250 seats under tarps in the Georgia Tech section.  Aside from that, there’s the holes in the lower section, the club level seating (the blue seats) are about 50-50, and the upper section outside the tarps is about 60% full.  So, let’s say that when we balance that out that Georgia Tech sold about half of the tickets in their quarter of the stadium, and we add in any stragglers they had in the rest of the place.  So, that puts us at around 15% of the tickets.  To Iowa’s 60-65%.

This is why I love my Iowa fans.  And why we always get invited to a bowl game one better than what our football team’s record would otherwise merit.

Anyway, the band was looking good, with the usual HAWKS formation:

As well as a new one that I hadn’t seen before.

We always talked about wanting to make a Tigerhawk while I was in band, but it never happened because we weren’t very good at big, field wide curves while I was in, and that’s basically all a Tigerhawk is.  Have you ever tried drawing one free hand?  It’s impossible to get it right.  Drawing a perfect circle free hand would be easier.  But the band seemed to pull it off pretty well.  Hopefully it will become a mainstay of the pre-game show.

And a few pictures of the post-game festivities:

And I quite like that last one, so I played with it in GIMP (free PhotoShop) a little bit, and squared it up to look more straight on, and cropped out the rest.

You can click on the image to get a bigger version of it.  It would make a great desktop background.  On every computer you touch.  Just saying.

I also tried taking some video while I was at the Hawkeye Huddle and at the game.  Random fact – the Orange Bowl has only ever had two occasions on which teams did their own pep rallies before the game, in 2003 and 2010.  Both times it was Iowa.  Apparently we’re the only team that does Hawkeye Huddles or equivalents.  So, on that note, here’s the Hawkeye Marching Band playing the short version of On Iowa at the Hawkeye Huddle from about half way back in the crowd:

A clip from Thriller:

I have no idea why that has become a sort of band tradition now. They play it all the time. The only reason I can think is because the dance is kind of fun to do. And it pisses me off to no end that they play it after the third quarter of games instead of Hey Jude. But don’t get me started on that, or any of the many other HMB traditions that Kevin Kastens and Myron Welch have combined to destroy.

Deep Breath.

And here is a full version of Hey Jude:

Ah, that makes me feel better.

And a small chunk of the series as the band marches out. Admittedly probably the most boring clip of the bunch. I was expecting them to march out through the crowd, but they went out through the back of the stage. Probably makes a lot more sense, but not quite as entertaining to watch.

And I did a quick 360 panorama of the crowd at the end of the Hawkeye Huddle to show about how big it is. This was right at the end, so people were starting to filter out:

And, the last few plays of the Orange Bowl, starting with a Georgia Tech 4th down, then an orange Gatorade shower (a little early) for Ferentz, a few kneel downs, and the starting of the post game celebration, with a bit of In Heaven There Is No Beer in the background: