My Reality T.V. Show Idea

So it was the grand finale of American Idol over the last 2 nights and my wife and I really wanted to watch the shows. Only trouble was we have just moved into a new house and cable T.V. hasn't been turned on yet. To remedy the situation on Tuesday, we fashioned the children in their PJ's, grabbed some microwave popcorn and took a portable T.V. over to our empty rental home who's cable service I was still paying for. It was 7:55pm, 5 minutes before the start of the show. I started to hook the T.V. up and much to my horror I noticed that the T.V., being portable, was made to plug into the lighter of a car, not an AC receptacle. Something had to be done. This was a dire emergency.

The new house we are living in is literally 5 miles away from the rental. I figured I could get there and back in time and hopefully only miss one song. So I sprinted to the minivan, sped out to the new house, flew out of my car, sprinted upstairs, ripped the 27-inch T.V. out of the kid's entertainment center, flew back downstairs while ignoring the discomfort of carrying the T.V., ran to the car, threw the T.V. in the front seat and started speeding back. About midway down the road, I glanced at the clock... 8:07... It'll be OK! I'm GONNA MAKE IT!!!... Then it dawned on me: "Oh, my God. I've hit rock bottom". "I'm in desperation for a reality T.V. show". "I'm now officially completely domesticated".

Someday we'll look back on this decade as the reality T.V. show decade. We'll think about how silly we all were for getting so caught up in the foray. People are already getting a little sick of it, but something keeps us coming back. So, before reality T.V. shows ride off into the sunset, I'd like to put my bid in for a new reality T.V. show called: "The American Dream".

The American Dream will have about 20 contestants. The contestants will all be chosen based on the best 20 business plans that were submitted and then judged by a panel of venture capitalists. Each contestant will get $100,000 in funding from the producers of the show along with anonymous funding from some of the investors. The contestants will start the business with the seed capital and run the business for 3 months. Then the show will summarize the first 3 months and the contest will begin. The contestants can hire whoever they want and run their business from anywhere they want. Each week financial statements will be submitted and the investor judges will let one entrepreneur go until there's one left standing. Each week curve balls will be thrown in, like materials shortages or employee discrimination lawsuits, to see how the business owners react. All of the businesses that lose can keep running their business, but they have to pay back the original $100,000 investment. The winner, doesn't have to pay the original investment back and will be considered for a lucrative buyout or even an IPO. The lucky business owner can decide at the end to either stay with the company or settle down and retire.

I think this would be cool. I'd watch it. But when I think about it, this is the real reality show. The one we live and breathe every day. The difference is that some of us chose to play the game and some of us choose to drive back and forth with T.V.'s in a desperate pursuit to experience a piece of a show like American Idol. Congratulations, Carrie.

Kendra Becomes the Apprentice: Book Smarts Wins!

My title for this article is actually a headline that I saw on nbc.com for a recap of the final Apprentice episode of season 3. Book Smarts Wins! So this is suppose to tell us something?

I watched this entire season, as most other fans did, with the Book Smarts/Street Smarts battle in the back of my mind. I should have known that it would come to this. Two candidates: one with no college degree, one with one. And in the end, the candidate with one put herself over the edge with her credentials. How convenient that it got to that point. I will say, that if the producers of the show had the final 2 end up that way on purpose, they did a pretty good job of making it look like it happened that way by happenstance.

So, point well taken. Book smarts overcomes. So what did this decide? I think that it didn't prove anything more than how ridiculous the degree stigma is in business. Frankly, I would have chosen Kendra over Tana anyway even if the roles were reversed. Tana was abrasive and paid no attention to detail, while Kendra was quietly organized and prepared. Did college teach her that? Maybe. But wouldn't it have been interesting if the producers threw in another twist and revealed at the final boardroom that Tana actually had the degree and Kendra didn't? Boy, opinions would have swayed then, huh?

I met a woman one time at a business lunch who revealed that she wore a wedding band in business situations even though she wasn't married. She stated that people took her more seriously as a married woman than a single woman; and, I have to admit, when she revealed that to me, my opinion of her immediately changed.

Society needs milestones. We need roadmaps of people before we can figure out exactly who we're talking to. A college degree is a milestone and when we meet a person with one, they fall into the college graduate category no matter whether it's good or bad. Every once in a while we have to convince other people that it's OK for them to have certain opinions about us based on what we've accomplished in society.

If the Donald wants to really prove the Book Smarts/Street Smarts myth, he needs to have a show where there's an even number of college grads and non-college grads, but nobody knows who is one and who isn't. Then the stigma goes away and raw talent steps in. Use what you learned in college... that's OK... but don't expect special dispensation just because you have a piece of paper. Of course, if the non-college grads that end up on that show turned out to be similar to this group of idiots, it wouldn't be that hard to tell.

I hate all these little societal rules, biases and innuendos. I'm glad a woman won this time, though.

Software Fugitives

I used to work for a small software consulting company. I was the network guy... well the guy that did everything else because I didn't know enough to be a developer. This company was primarily in business to develop custom software. We did ok. Nothing spectacular. But we delivered what the customer wanted and the price wasn't astronomical. I made a mistake, though. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted real software. Stuff that people buzzed about. Like blogger for instance. But what I didn't realize is that wasn't necessarily what the customer wanted. That company is what it is. They'll never be billionares, but they'll never be hungry. Mainstream isn't why they're playing the game.... jeans, sneakers, t-shirts and foosball is.

So now I'm a V.P. at one of the top 10 homebuilding companies in the country. I was hired to bring 3 technical systems together at a division where there was no technical savvy whatsoever. It turned into an executive management gig and I rarely look back.

But something's bothering me.

One of the new technical systems that have been implemented at this division and across this company is a horrible piece of cow dung. Without getting into too many of the specifics, I'll mention a couple of phrases that should drive any technical person crazy while reading this:

How 'bout "Progress Database" or "not normalized" or "inordinate sums for enhancements" or "manual nightly batch pushes to transfer data" or "data disappears" or "not relational" or "not user friendly" or "hire more people just to maintain it".... I could go on and on, but I won't. My point here is that the company I'm working for is already in the hole over $5,000,000.00 for this piece of crap. They started trying to implement this product 5 years ago and limped along until they decided to either scrap the project all together or hire people like me to get it going. They decided to get it going and the amount of money that they are continuing to spend and will spend to get it where it needs to be is hard to swallow.

I've spent countless hours struggling with this product. I've also spent many hours on conference calls with the CIO of my company and the developers (in Canada) of this product along with several other technical people. And the biggest problem I have with the whole situation is that the people who developed this product just don't care to help us. They've gotten so much money from us and they stand to get so much more that they just don't care. They know we're not going to leave now... we've got too much invested. But we should leave, because it sucks. We'll never benefit.

We should have some sort of recourse though, shouldn't we? I mean, we've paid for a product that is barely doing what it needs to do and we're pouring money into it. A real company would respond. A real company has to answer to the press and shareholders and stuff. These people answer to no one. They just half-ass the day and get in their Ferrari's and drive home.

The small company that I used to work for would have never gotten themselves into this situation. God bless 'em they couldn't sell to save their lives, so they just did what they could through people they knew. They never would have hit the big time, but they also never would get themselves in a situation where a lawsuit is far from farfetched. But who are the idiots here? The homebuilding company that's paying the money? The dorks in Canada who produce shit? Or the small cute little companies that simply stay in the black and forgo this colossal sea of money where mistakes are forgiven through trial, error and uneducated people forking over cash?

At some point you have to look in the mirror and say to yourself that you don't want to take advantage of people. But I was never asking my old company to do that. I simply wanted them to take a little more of a lover's leap into a world where people will pay dearly for what they want... and let you make mistakes getting there. Someday there will be lawsuits and lawyers and technically-minded CIO's who will hold software companies accountable for the crap they produce. But until then we have to keep paying and the Canuk's have to keep answering support calls and cashing checks and rolling their eyes at our whining. And those missing the boat, well, congratulations gentlemen!... You'll never lose another foosball match in a local bar... BRAVO.