Prime the pump

I knew that management consulting was a generalist calling, but I had no idea how generalist.

On Friday, I overheard one of my coworkers talking to his supervisor about the work he was doing. They were conducting some basic strategic diligence for a private equity client (translation: making sure the company the private equity firm is thinking about buying is strategically sound). They spoke of innovations in some sort of new plastic to prevent it from leeching into the liquid it contained. Thinking this was some sort of materials or chemicals company, I asked him what industry the target was in.

HIM: “Breast pumps.”
ME: “Really?”
HIM “No, we’re doing porn.”
ME: “REALLY!?”
HIM: “No you idiot, we’re doing breast pumps.”

I later learned that, apparently, breast pumps are actually a very well-tracked industry as there are really only three drivers for it:

• birth rate (the more births, the more breast pumps)
• disposable income (the more income, the more breast pumps)
• “innovation” (marketing? new “form factors”?)

And thus I learned what the recruiting team meant when they said that I would learn a lot on this job.

(Image source)

Taken

My good friend and Bench Press partner-in-crime Anthony pointed me to this trailer which, although not comic-book related, still excited me as it casts the perfect voice for what must be the most awesome over-the-phone threat of all time:

I have no idea if this movie will be any good, but I like Liam Neeson, and I liked this trailer enough to check it out.

A Dilbert Tradition

My good friend, college roommate, and Bench Press partner-in-crime Eric never lets me down. Despite 3 years of rooming with me (and just ask anyone who knows me, I’m impossible to actually like if you have to see or hear me on a daily basis), enduring my interest in bizarre Starcraft-Game-Theory interests, and basically letting me live in his room to use his old broken Mac to write my thesis and do my problem sets because my VAIO broke down, he still found it in his heart to make it a tradition every year to gift me Dilbert: 2009 Day-to-Day Calendarcome Christmas time. So, while I can’t say it was a surprise, I was very happy to come home and find this waiting for me:

There’s no better way of coping with work stress than to remind yourself that, hey, at least my life isn’t like Dilbert’s… Oh. On second thought, CURSE YOU ERIC!!!! WHY DO YOU TORMENT ME SO!?!?

All the right words

Tech PR has a bad reputation – and for a good reason. While my blogs have never been popular enough that I’ve been inundated with PR requests, as a consultant, I have spent endless hours sifting through meaningless “hot” buzzwords written by individuals who seem to know very little about the products/services they are peddling.

But, never have I seen something quite as hyped up and buzzword-laden as this. Enter Creative, the Singaporean firm responsible for making the SoundBlaster sound cards and a whole series of portable media players. Someone at the firm must have been buzzword crazy, because they created a product which:

• is supposedly some hot new chip
• will be demo-ed at the January Consumer Electronics Show
• is promising to change everything (like a certain President-elect?)
• sounds vaguely like a certain best-selling Nintendo gaming console
• somehow links the chip to a hot biology topic

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the Zii, apparently a harbinger of “stem cell computing” (whatever that means):

Seriously?