HOLY

CRAP!

This is awesome. It just stinks that they moth-balled it. What most people don’t know, is that after the Challenger accident, president Regan (nee Ronaldus Magnus)forbade Department of Defense payloads from being launched by the shuttle.

Also, it is little known that one of the original goals of the shuttle program was for the USAF to operate their own fleet, separate from NASA.

I’ve often said that the fastest way to commercialize space is to weaponize it.

Eleven Pieces of Flair: Personal Hygiene and the working geek.

The minimum you must do.

Computer geeks and personal hygiene are not often talked about together. As my gift to the world, I’ve written the following primer for the computer geek to follow as part of a plan to keep one’s co-workers from gagging any time one enters a room, or indeed strangling one before one has a chance to escape a room.

There are varing degrees of “sick.” Mild being that you cause people to blanch just by your appearance, severe being to actually pass some sort of air-borne (or even worse, fluid-borne) bug that causes a co-worker to miss work. The bottom line is that if you make your co-workers sick, they’re going to lynch you, and you’d deserve it.

These steps can be employed by any other white-collar worker to similar results of not being lynched. However, this primer is mostly targeted at the male computer geek.

Most of these steps are geared to reduce your overall OPF (Other People’s Funk) footprint.

Keep in mind, this is the minimum. Eleven pieces of flair. You don’t want to do just the minimum, do you?

Early last week, some well-meaning person decided to take one for the team and come in to work sick. The result of the man-hours recouped by this one act of sheer pluck lead directly to a plague spreading across the office like a house on fire.

I was lucky enough to contract this lovely affliction by Thursday. Unfortunately, this was some strong stuff. I have rarely ever in my life had any kind of chest-cold that a good dose of albuterol every few hours wouldn’t at least HELP. Not this time. This virulent pestilence laughs at merest albuterol.

Out of sheer anger toward the person that did this, I’m back up to about %70 of normal today, and working from home so as not to spread it any further.

Whilst fuming, I came upon some other gripes that I have about how people comport themselves at work… I’ve been saving this up for a long time.

1. Take a shower. Every day. PLEASE. Use soap. Particularly on “pits-and-bits.” It’s embarrassing to have to say so, but some people apparently still don’t get it.

2. If you have dandruff, you pretty much have to abandon long hair. There is nothing for it. Walking about all flaky is going to disgust everyone with all of the OPF you’re dumping into the atmosphere. Plus, it is very uncomfortable.
   • Wear your hair short.
   • Use anti-dandruff shampoo every day. You can find many anti-dandruff shampoos today that don’t smell like they are anti-dandruff shampoo.
   • Wet hair. Apply shampoo. Lather. Rinse.
   • Apply shampoo again. Lather. Rinse.
   • Give up wearing black shirts until you get that junk under control.
3. Use some sort of deodorant. This is not optional. Give up the funk.

   Patchouli is not deodorant. Anything similar to patchouli is not deodorant. Incense is not deodorant. If you don’t like the aluminum, use something alcohol-based, but keep in mind it evaporates quickly.

   If you forget every once-in-a-while, it is forgivable. If you make it a habit, keep a backup supply in your desk. Use it when necessary.

   In the summer months, it may be necessary to apply significantly more product than in the cooler months. Or, it may be necessary to re-apply midway through the day.

4. While we’re on the subject of smells, don’t wear so much perfume/cologne that we smell you 10 seconds before you enter the room.
5. No one wants to see your hairy arse. Wear a belt.
6. Unless your name is “Magnum P.I.” no one wants to see your hairy chest.

   Even if your name is “Magnum P.I.” I don’t want to see it.

   In the name of all that is holy, wear an undershirt, even in the summer. Shave anything that pokes out above the collar. This means the back of the collar too.

   White Haynes “Beefy-T” shirts are available here for the cost of $2.74 each plus shipping. Buy ten.

   They are cheap, they last for years, they will protect your nice shirts from getting sweat-stained, and they will keep your nasty, oily chest-fleece out of my sight.

7. Shave.
   Many computer geeks prefer the manly look of a full beard. Very few of them can pull it off. Follow this simple syntax:
   • If you are going to wear a beard or moustache, keep food out of it, and trim that forest once a week!
   • Keep the areas of your face that you do shave shaved clean. I realize that most geeks who grow beards do so because they don’t want to shave every day. Think of it as “code maintenance.”
   • If you use a Gillette Mach 3, ditch it. Buy a Sensor Excel. The Mach 3 is too big to do any useful shaving. The angle of the Mach 3 head makes it useless for anything other than scraping paint off of the ceiling. Mach 3 Power is just a rip-off. You are smarter than this, don’t fall for the Mach 3. Your wallet will thank you. Your face will thank you.
   • When you shave, make one pass shaving top-to-bottom. Re-lather, and make another pass from bottom-to-top. Re-lather, and make one final clean-up pass where there are rough patches.
   • When you shave, the most important thing you can do is NOT PRESS DOWN on the razor. THIS is what causes razor burn. If you follow the 3 pass method and don’t press down, you will get a closer shave than at any time in your life, and you won’t have any razor burn.

8. Trim your nails once a week. BUT DON’T FREAKING DO IT AT WORK! That is disgusting!

9. As unpleasant as it sounds, nose and ear hairs have to go. I don’t care if you do it with scissors or a hedge-trimmer. Nothing screams “UNCLEAN!” louder than big-ol nose and ear hairs poking out all over the place.
10. No amount of “yuck” can convey the way people at work treat the restrooms. There’s no delicate way to put this, but I’ll try.

    The only saving grace is that they are several orders of magnitude better than the ones in my high school were. Those were so bad that I would leave school and risk getting caught and suspended rather than go in for any reason.

    If I had done, it is likely that I would now be dead, due to some mystery infection they still don’t have a name for.

    • TRY not to leave any kind of your bodily secretions where other people are going to have to touch them.

    • FLUSH. If necessary FLUSH AGAIN YOU DIRTY BASTARD.
    • Do not under any circumstances comb your hair whilst leaning against the sink, thus leaving greasy head-filament all over the sink that everyone uses to wash their hands.
    • ALWAYS WASH THOSE NASTY RAW-SEWAGE HANDS. Even if you only took a leak. Especially if you only took a leak. You have no idea how much bacteria is creeping around down-there.
    • If you insist on brushing your teeth in the restroom at work, you are probably insane. The amount of ambient OPF in there should convince you that the risk-to-benefit ratio is more than it’s worth. Just make sure you brush them before you come to work. Touch up with breath mints or those Listerine film things. Still, if you must, then I can’t fault you for wearing more flair than the minimum… You’re just braver than I am.
    • Don’t talk to me in the restroom. That isn’t what the place is for. I find it hard to be polite whilst concentrating so intently on avoiding so much of other people’s filth.

      Questions like “How’s it goin’?” are clearly inappropriate. What ever you have to say can wait until later.

11. No matter what you do, don’t come to work sick! You’ll only make things worse. Work from home if you have to. Check your email. Check your voice mail. Dial-in to meetings. VPN-in to do your normal work. Stay out until you are well. Then stay out an extra day.
    The worst thing that you can do for office productivity is to come in to work and spread your cooties around.

    The worst thing you can do for YOUR health is to come in sick. Because when I find you, I’m going to make you suffer.