His Jobness at the Oscars....

Posing here with little known movie director and screenwriter Jon Chu. I guess after Jon published this shot on Twitter (I'm sure an iPhone was involved here), he became a instant celeb and the focus of tech reporters queueing up to hear what His Jobness had to say to him. It's not El Jobso's habit though to be posing with obscure celebrities unless they meant something. Who knows, we may hear more about this Chu guy in the future. His best investment so far was to pose with the Master at the 2010 Oscars.

Anyways, Jobs went home with an Oscar too... euh... his Pixar did, with the incredible "Up".  It's Director Pete Docter, at the award ceremony, looked very much like one of his own animated characters if you asked me (from Monsters, maybe?). Not relevant though. This guy knows how to make 3D animation. Watching the Up BD, I often forgot it were made of just computer generated scenes... felt like real life, with emotions and all. My favorite scene was when kid Russell asked the old man Carl to take Dug the talking dog along with them and Carl refused... Russell responds, ...BUT HE'S A TALKING DOG! Russel's body expression, along with his voice shouting in high pitch, showing an utmost surprise about how someone could leave behind such a miracle of nature (a talking dog!) were simply wünderbar.

Thank you much Steve for giving us Pixar and its people...

Makes you proud to be born Greek...

The number of clips posted on YouTube about the Greek financial mess and the reaction of the Germans is simply unbelievable. This is one of my preferred ones, based on a reaction of a Greek starlet who figured quite an effective way to appear on a National tabloid TV. Don't bother if you can't understand what she says. Pictures are worth a thousand words!

VJK Diaries said: All sales is based on deception...

Sun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception... Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
Sales is warfare. Therefore all sales is based on deception! 
In all this you need to define the enemy. The enemy is not the customer... it is your competitors and those who are to win big in case you lose. These are the ones you need to deceive while committing your resources to win a deal. 
Thus, All sales is based on deception... Don't you ever forget that...

The truth behind the Greek Drama...

"...Daddy, Daddy, who are the "financial markets" who are bullying the Greeks and the euro? 

Well, son, they are hedge funds, pension funds and the trading arms of the big banks.

But Daddy aren't those the same banks which the world's governments have just spent billions of euros, pounds and dollars to rescue from the consequences of their own greed and stupidity?..."

Read the remaining article here. This is the best ever written, yet, about the Greek financial clusterfuck. Thank you much John Lichfield, of The Independent, for writing this so clearly, and thank you much Niko for pointing me to the article. Excellent!

Red Hammers do exist! They really do...

What the heck did I have for breakfast, you might think... What has a Red Hammer got to do with anything? Calm down, y'all. Here comes the story.

On a quite sunny morning, March 2nd (that's yesterday, right?) I get this message from my pal Wes, from some place near Liverpool, England. Where the Beatles come from, innit? John, Paul, Ringo and George...

The message said, Relax folks, you are about to witness some kick ass phenomenon that will blow your socks off! Wow! It then said you must give answers to a few questions... simple arithmetics that was, like, 56+7 equals... you got to think quick about the answer and scroll further down to verify your outcome; there you saw the right response, say...euh... 63! It went on like this for another four or five sums, and you hopefully got all those right, of course, and it made you feel kinda like Mensa level genius, after all. Until surprise came to town! Hold on your socks, folks!

It said... keep relax, calm down, think quick and, now, give me a color and a tool. Don't think for too long, just answer real quick, whatever pops out of your skull!

I goes... euh... Red... euh... Hammer!

I scroll down next... and, a few empty lines further down I fall into this paragraph sayin'... you guessed right, my friend! It is a Red Hammer (just like this, in bold type and in red color).

WHAT THE F@CK! Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph! How the hell did it do that!?!? I'm telling you... It just rocked my socks off! I'm like, pinch me, mom... I'm dreaming! There's not much left in cyberspace that could still surprise me, but, this? Gimme a break!

As I scroll even further, the story continues... Don't you worry, it says, it appears that the vast majority of people taking the test come up with the same answer: Red Hammer. Why? Go ask your shrink, WTF do I know? However, I've spent too many years studying Statistics and Science to take that kind of shit for granted. Was that claim for real? Let's see for ourselves... Next thing I know, I fire the same message to more than a dozen contacts of mine, that I happen to feed with Internet jokes on a regular basis... I must admit, I get quite a few of them internet jokes from a couple good suppliers of mine on a daily basis, and I keep dispatching the best among those to my own recipient groups, just to lighten up their miserable executive lives as they keep wasting them by running their companies and businesses daily in the four corners of the planet. It's a good bunch, most of them living on both sides of this pond.

Not too long after that, answers started pouring in. "I got a blue hammer", sez one... "sorry, I ain't normal, as it appears". "I got a yellow screwdriver", sez paddy Shaun... "sorry, I'm Abbie Normal too". "I've got a gray spoon", sez another, "I guess, that's because I just had... my lunch!" Aint' that fun? Finally, a few of them, sounding terrified like they just escaped a falling wall in the recent Chile earthquake, admitted:"My Goad, I thought of a Red Hammer too! I haven't even seen a red hammer in my whole freakin' life...", said one, "...but I just thought of one!"

What is the conclusion of my mini survey, among pals, then? Apparently, Red Hammer wins. I had a dozen responses, whereby three of them were 50% "right" (selected either Red or Hammer), and four (incl. my own answer) got Red Hammer together. It wasn't the vast majority like the message initially claimed, but this is because most of my recipients are abnormal weirdos... what did you expect? Me, a genuine situs inversus - no kiddin' (google this and freak out), I eventually proved to be a lot more 'normal' than most of my pals! Go figure! Same thing, my ex-personal assistant, Annick. She's normal too. And Geert S. The best salesman born ever! Him too! And somebody else from P&G, whose name I forgot! Not Noel F, someone else!  In any case, the Red Hammer combination in these tests proved the highest, relatively speaking of course, and is pretty spooky and 'significant'. Try to explain that, dude...

BTW, I just googled "red hammer" in the images section and to my surprise, yes sir, there exist genuine red hammers indeed! One of them pictures I copied here for your pleasure too. So, Shaun my bro, you don't need to be a Turkeyneck like me to think of a Red Hammer after all! Red Hammers exist! Yep! They do!