Category Archives: Freaks

On Employee Blogging

Jeremy Zawodny recently wrote a pretty good summary about employee blogging. A few people have asked me why I haven’t blogged more about working at Yahoo!, and what it is that I do there. Basically, I always follow these basic criteria when I blog about work:

  • Is it about anything sensitive in any way?
  • Is it disrespectful to either your employer or any coworkers?
  • Would you flinch in the slightest if your boss, his boss, all the way up to the CEO and the board of directors read it?

Does that leave you with anything? Is what you have left interesting? No, I mean interesting to other people. Yes, that’s what I thought. You’re not left with much.

Hey, it sucks that Mark Jen got fired from Google, but it looks like he pretty consistently violated my three rules above, and apparently posted something that in itself pushed it over the top, since he was forced to remove it. There’s a huge difference between writing an occasional blog about your employer (as Jeremy Zawodny often does, and is fine!) and blogging about your employer as though the whole exercise of working there was a documentary writing project.

Let’s move on, guys!

Fishtail

That’s what happens to a big-ass pickup truck with giant tires and a lift kit when you slam on the brakes.

Yesterday evening, while driving home from work at about 7:30pm, traffic was moving OK on the 101 South. Some asshole in the aforementioned big-ass pickup decided he needed to pass someone so that he could resume his speed of 2x the average. He accelerated to said speed, soon after noticing that the traffic ahead was basically stopped, and slammed on his brakes, mid-pass. The combination of turning, slamming on brakes, and going entirely too fast made for some somewhat entertaining, but scary events.

The truck looked like it spun out on ice. It went completely around, and then fishtailed back and forth 180 degrees around five or six times while he was trying to regain control. He finally regained directional control, facing the wrong way, and drove up an onramp (the wrong way) to get out of the middle of the highway, and most likely to find somewhere to change his pants. Amazingly lucky guy. He almost killed himself and about 20 others in his fishtailing, and very nearly flipped the truck.

This was all about one hundred yards in front of me, I was the next car behind him. Yikes.