Business 2.0 has a list of last year’s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. The list looks “at the year in bungled layoffs, customer-service snafus, executive follies, and other madness.” Some highlights from the list:
In June, research firm VisitorVille Intelligence reveals that two out of every three Microsoft employees it tracked use Google, not MSN, when conducting searches on the Internet.
In August, McDonald’s runs a promotional contest in Japan in which it gives away 10,000 Mickey D’s-branded MP3 players.
The gadgets come preloaded with 10 songs - and, in some cases, a version of the QQPass family of Trojan horse viruses, which, when uploaded to a PC, seeks to capture passwords, user names, and other data and then forward them to hackers.
On the morning of April 3, Amazon.com sends an e-mail headed “UCLA Wins!” to virtually everyone to whom it has ever sold a sports-related item, attempting to hawk a cap celebrating the Bruins’ stirring victory in college basketball’s championship game.
Just one problem:
The game isn’t scheduled to be played until later that night. When it is, UCLA is trounced by Florida, 73-57.
I got tagged by David Lee King some time ago for the five things meme. I’ve been a little covered up with work, the holidays, and family, so I’m a little behind. If you’re still interested, here you go:
- The “F” in my name is for Forrest. No, Life is not like a box of chocolates.
- I’ve been blessed with a wonderful wife, Candace, and two beautiful sons, Clay Fielding and Cole Fulton. My wife daily gives me the desire to be a better man. My boys give me immense pride and happiness, a willingness to constantly explore and learn, and the occasional runny nose.
- A friend and I once tried to use our parkas like a parachutes to slow ourselves down on our skateboards. My friend still has the scars on his knees that prove our thesis wrong. Apparently unzipping your coat and holding it open while going down hill does little to slow you down. I would later learn this in physics class, but I’ve always been a hands-on learner.
- I grew up being a REM freak. So much so that in 10th grade, I translated “Stand” into Latin. Yep, I was a dork. In case you are interested, sta in loco ubi es.
- If you ever hear me speak, you’ll quickly figure out that I’m not from Ohio. I was born and raised in Tennessee. Don’t worry, my oldest son can already say “Go Vols” and “Touchdown, Big Orange,” so there’s little chance he’ll grow up favoring the Buckeyes.
So there’s my five. I’d love to tag some folks, but this meme has gotten really cold by now. Perhaps on the next go-around I’ll be a little more timely.
Perhaps that sounds a little bizarre, but in fact, my Palm Tungsten E2 was automatically turning itself on. I would turn it off, and it would automatically start right up again after about 10 seconds. I thought this bizarre behavior was the result of a bug, so I did a hard reset. After syncing the Palm again, the behavior returned.
I investigated the issue on the Brighthand Forums, which is an very valuable resource for Palm users. According to this thread, it was an issue with a birthday setting this week. My sister-in-law’s birthday is January 7, so that was causing an alarm for 2006 (The default reminder for birthdays is 7 days). Since it is no longer 2006, apparently the alarm does not display, but the device still turns itself on. I changed the reminder for her birthday to 3 days, and all is now well. Beats the heck out of calling Palm tech support, since my warranty expired some time ago. In summary, if you have any event within the first week of January, you should set the reminder between January 1 and the day of the event, not December.
