Programming Note:  It's full speed ahead for my work project.  For the next few weeks I will be posting infrequently. Thank you for your understanding.   ► If you're over the age of 45, you may remember the TV commercials featuring Ed McMahon peddling Publisher's Clearing House and their famous "Prize Patrol" sweepstakes. Ed and his PCH crew would show up at your house and award huge money prizes to suckers that entered the sweepstakes. Typically, you had to buy a truckload of magazine subscriptions and mail-in the form to enter. That's how my parents did it, which explains when growing up our house had all kinds of magazines. Mom liked Good Housekeeping, McCalls, Reader's Digest, and Redbook. Dad was into Popular Mechanics, TV Guide, and Car & Driver. Don't ask me how I remembered all that. Our house resembled the waiting room of a doctor's office, circa 1983. There was never a shortage of bathroom reading material. Or magazines to use to ...

  Photo courtesy of: People Management Bossware is the term to describe productivity tracking software used by 60% of companies in the USA. Some folks refer to it as "spyware" or "productivity monitoring" programs.  The type of monitoring software used varies by companies and industries. Bossware includes GPS monitoring of your device (PC, laptop, phone, wearables, and other devices) regardless if it's company issued OR if you are using your own personal equipment for company business. It also includes email tracker monitor on displays, webcams, screenshots, microphones, mouse, stylus, and keyboards (to determine how often you're typing and using a mouse, in addition to monitoring of sites you visit. Some bossware can also monitor eye tracking and facial activity. Employers use bossware to ensure employees are not goofing around on the job and to prevent the disclosure of company info, trade secrets, etc. by workers in the office (or those who work from home...

Deep fake movie trailer for Back to the Future 4 is making the internet rounds. Image courtesy of Richard Nebens / The Direct.com A deepfake movie trailer is making the rounds on the internet that is misleading the public into believing there's a new sequel coming out for the Back to the Future movie franchise. It actually popped up on my phone Google news feed.  The deepfake is fake is titled "Back to the Future 4: Back in Timeline". The deepfake movie trailer shows Tom Holland's head superimposed on Michael J. Fox's body. It spliced together clips from past BTTF movies. It also took a clip from Spider Man: Far From Home which shows Tom and Michael in a scene. The deepfake movie trailer was uploaded on You Tube by KH Studios and it's raked up 11 million views. This isn't the first time someone has tried to fool BTTF fans into thinking a new movie was coming. In 2020, You Tube EZRyderX47 created one using Tom Holland and Robert Downey, Jr. and their face...

  Photo: MuckRuck; LinkedIn logo. There are many who may remember the early days of the professional network site known as LinkedIn. It was started back in 2003 as a place where professionals could network with like-minded individuals without the noise, drama,  and oversharing BS that plague other platforms (ex: Facebook). It was also a place to network with recruiters and job hunt as the platform allows companies to post openings. When I was surfing the internet the other day, I ran across an article by Business Insider on how weird LinkedIn has become, which prompted me to write this commentary. I was one of the early adopters of LinkedIn (joined around 2005) and I’ve seen firsthand how it’s changed. Here’s an example of a LinkedIn post that was included in the article. This is a typical of what you expect to find on the site nowadays.   "Take one post from Peter Rota, an SEO specialist from Massachusetts. "I have a secret," he wrote to his thousands of followe...

  Photo: Freebie Supply   After deliberation, experimentation, and whatever the heck else the company did, Lego has abandoned plans to make its bricks out of recycled plastic.This contradicts their pledge to only use recycled materials by 2032. The company said it spent years testing the process to make their bricks from PET recycled plastic but they decided "screw it, we're quitting this shit and our pledge" for numerous reasons. PET plastic is what's used to make water bottles, soda bottles, containers, and a bunch of other stuff. As we all know, plastic water bottles are one of the biggest culprits to clogging up landfills and pollution, especially in the ocean where those damn things can be found floating in the most obscure places. According to National Geographic, half of all plastic pollution is submerged below the ocean surface.  Lego officials said they discovered that making the bricks from used plastic bottles and other plastic materials would require the c...

   Photo: KRON4.com; Ticketmaster Uncle Sam (Govt. Name: IRS) is saying the party is over to people who make their living hoarding concert or sporting event tickets and reselling them online. Resellers this year will be scrutinized by Uncle Sammy (IRS) when they file their taxes as a new law has been implemented that takes effect this tax year.   The new law lowered the tax reporting threshold for users of e-commerce platforms including Ticketmaster and Stub Hub.   According to Fox Business, “The IRS is requiring these types of platforms to provide info on sellers’ proceeds to the IRS if their ticket sales are more than $600 in one year (previously the threshold was $20,000 in revenue and more than 200 transactions). The new change to the threshold will be triggered with just one transaction if it goes over $600 limit.” So what does all this mean? Ticketing platforms will now be required to report sellers’ proceeds of $600 or more over the course of a year and s...

  Photo: Teen Vogue When you think of business attire, the last thing you'd expect to see in the hallways at some corporate office is an emo wannabe wearing head-to-toe goth. Today's corporate Gen Z are taking a page out of the Robert Smith & Siouxsie Sioux catalog by sporting the goth look for the office. Nothing says "Please take me seriously" than looking like you crawled out of a coffin carrying a can of Clamato juice and your smartphone. I must be getting old because the goth look during my youth was what you wore to a rave party, a Cure concert, or to a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It sure as hell wasn't what you wore to have a sit-down with clients or the CEO. Corporate goth is the latest trend among the Tik Tok generation. Young professionals are donning their best white pancake makeup, black eye liner, fishnet stockings, pleather, and greasy hair to make whatever-the-fuck statement they think they're making with their atti...

  Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Left), Dominick Reuter/Insider (Right); Business Insider For about the past two years, Walmart has been quietly testing a new shopping cart design at select stores. In the photo above, the left is the old cart and the right is the new cart. They recently decided to roll them out at more stores. The new carts are not a hit with some shoppers. Yea, I know, first world problems. The only time I cared about shopping cart design was whenever I was involved in shopping cart races in college drunk off my ass. Somehow, I always managed to get stuck with the wobbly wheel cart. But that's another story for another day.     According to a Walmart spokesperson, the new carts, "are intended to enhance the shopping experience". Translation: we want people to buy more stuff.  The new carts are about the same size as their old carts (tiny bit bigger) which you think would be a plus for Walmart shoppers to p...

  Wow, has it been 25 years since Netflix launched their DVD by mail service? To me, it seems longer.  After putting Blockbuster, Family Video, and your local mom & pop DVD stores out of business, Netflix is taking an axe to what made the company successful in their early days: the DVD by mail business. Netflix got its start in 1997 as a DVD mail rental business. The concept was revolutionary because it meant you no longer had to drive to a video store and spend time walking up and down aisles looking for something to rent and then getting pissed off it wasn't available. The concept of renting DVDs by mail took a while for consumers to warm up to. Netflix had a tough go at it in the beginning - so much so they offered to sell themselves to Blockbuster. But Blockbuster execs said, "Nah- we don't need you loser - we're king of the rental business". This decision would later be regretted by Blockbuster and go down in the annals of business as one of the biggest m...

   Job interviews are stressful and nerve wrecking. You're doing your best to impress hiring managers and potential boss and interviewers are doing what they can to weed out candidates. Hiring managers use various interview techniques to find the best candidate. There's the Behavioral interview, which asks the candidate questions about their past job experiences and skills. You know, the "tell me about yourself" or "tell me about a time you had to bla bla bla".   Then there's the Panel interview, which is a lot like being interrogated in a room full of cops. You have several interviewers sitting in a room launching questions at the candidate. Afterwards they compare notes on the individual.  The Case interview is my most hated type of interview. This is when a candidate is given a task or business problem to solve during the actual interview (while being timed) and then told to give a presentation of a solution to the interviewers. I've heard of comp...

  There are some who like company team building activities and retreats. There are others, like me, that dread them. I find them a waste of time and money. While I'm all for a having a work environment where people get along, my attitude about work is simple: do a good job that I'm proud of, do my best to get along with others, and be left alone. I'm not there to be a 24/7 sibling of the workplace family. Team building for peons tend consist of activities that range the gamut to make companies feel good. Examples of team building events I've had to endure include shitty pizza in a conference room with department cohorts where you're forced to listen to a motivational speaker drone on for hours followed by a kumbaya sing-a-long; or going offsite for the day and being forced to participate in "Corporate Olympics" where I cursed the day I joined the organization.  CEOs and C-suite execs don't do that kind of stuff. The latest team building trend among ove...