I understand the purveyors of malware, sort of, the same way I get why people spraypaint walls or put chewing gum where people can step on it.  At their most virulent, I suppose the digital vandals aren’t that far from the anarchists who placed bombs in train stations, ostensibly as a philosophical or political statement, but really because they were nuts who wanted to hurt people.

In my imagination, I can certainly picture the guys who authored the “I Love You” virus sitting around and chortling about the people they stung with their idiotic handiwork a few years ago. I was one. I was doing what I always did at that time: downloading music while I worked. The champions of repression and copyright protection had recently swung into action and killed the peer-to-peer version of Napster that was my main joy back then. This seemed weird to me, I recall. How was anybody being hurt by me downloading 50-year-old tracks that were nowhere available on CD or vinyl? Anyhow, that ship sailed, and Napster was shuttered, and I found myself on Kazaa.

I had inputted the name “Van Morrison” into the search window and come up with a nice roster of tunes, selected them all and hit Enter. Then all hell broke loose.

I’ve never seen anything like it. My screen flipped to Outlook and a rolling torrent of messages began scrolling down my display like water over a sluice, e-mail being ejected from my outbox at a terrifying rate. The outgoing messages all bore protestations of my love for the recipient, which I saw to my horror included the CEO, the President, the CFO and every vice president, executive vice president and senior executive vice president in the organization, as well as hordes of people I did not know.

In six seconds I ascertained what had happened and turned off my computer. In that tenth of a minute, I later learned some 5,000 e-mails were delivered. The people who received them immediately knew two things: 1) I had been doing something I shouldn’t have been doing on my computer that had nothing to do with company business and 2) I was a stupidhead who couldn’t quietly manipulate his hardware without getting caught.

Fortunately people already knew this about me, pretty much. I got a lot of nice e-mail afterwards that I treasured. My favorite was from our CEO at the time, a notoriously tough, no-nonsense dude, who wrote me back, “Thanks, man. I love you, too.” The least amused were the IT guys, who as usual had to clean up the mess.

Flip forward to this morning, when I got an e-mail that said:

Please read: Big Virus coming
 
I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus.  I checked Snopes and it is for real!! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. 
 
You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled ‘POSTCARD,’ regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which ‘burns’ the whole hard disc C of your computer.  This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.
 
If you receive a mail called’ POSTCARD,’ even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it! Shut down your computer immediately.
 
This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US. 

At this point, it can be said that I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I went to Google, which sent me to the excellent Urban Legends site at about.com. That’s right. There is no such virus. Sure, there are a host of mean, destructive Trojans, mugwumps, weasels and other malware that people have devised to attack you via greeting card. And you should watch out for them. This, however, is not one of them.

So we’re back to my original question. What kind of numbnuts gets his jollies creating bogus information that simply scares other people to no good purpose?

Isn’t that the job of financial journalism?

CNNMoney today features a very pretty gallery of homes now being offered in the top ten real estate marketing in the United States. These markets are:

• Grand Rapids, MI
• Baton Rouge, LA
• El Paso, TX
• McAllen, TX
• Rochester, NY
• Birmingham, AL
• Syracuse, NY
• Buffalo, NY
• New Orleans, LA
• Scranton, PA

First of all, I think it’s nice to see that any real estate markets are growing in this climate. Beyond that, this list is slightly frustrating, because they are all united by one common factor: I can’t live there.

It’s not that I wouldn’t want to. I love the idea of buying a house for $109,000 in a town like Syracuse, NY, and watching it appreciate over time. It’s just that any business I’m involved in has nothing to do with Syracuse, and even if peripheral portions of it does, I have no reason to attend operations from that location. Same goes for Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s always been on my list of places to go, but in my entire career no phone call has ever transpired that ended with the words, “You’re going to have to go to Grand Rapids right away.”

I have been in Texas a couple of times, most memorably in Irving, Texas, when my company was pitching for the right to build a cable television system there. It was very flat and hot. I had a feeling that there was a lot more going on in that state than what I saw during my three days in Irving. So I look forward to going back some day. But I don’t believe there’s going to be any call for me to settle down either in McAllister or, for that matter, El Paso, which I hear is also a heck of a burg.

And Scranton? I had a boss once from Scranton. He was a terrific guy. In fact, I’ve known quite a few people who came from Scranton. I never knew anybody who actually stayed there, though. I’m sure that’s no fault of Scranton’s. It’s just that for the most part a lot of the action is taking place in cities that are not Scranton.

In the places my friends and I are forced to live and work, people pay $750,000 for a 600-square-foot broom closet and count themselves lucky, or $1.25 million for a two-bedroom cottage with one bathroom. And for some reason the fastest-growing real estate markets aren’t anywhere near any of those places, so much the worse for us.

So I guess we have a choice. We can quit and go live in a place that is growing. Or keep on paying through the nose for low-growth domiciles in cities whose real estate markets are in the doldrums, dreaming all the while of the investment home we may never possess in boom towns like Buffalo, Rochester or Baton Rouge.

A few years ago I began to notice a phenomenon pertaining to power and the exercise thereof. We all know, thanks to Lord Acton, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We see that not only in daily life but in our ever churning news cycles on a global scale, writ large.

It is equally true, however, that minuscule power is likely to warp its possessor. I noticed this first at the beginning of my career, when the functionary in charge of painting my little office made me go through weeks of process, requisition and clarification; and anyone who has waited for a toll taker on the highway to count out his or her change while a line forms behind will also know what I mean.

I believe it may be possible to work out a mathematical expression of this idea. It would yield an inverse bell curve, I believe, with the amount of abuse highest at the two ends of the power spectrum - greatest and least. While I work out a trademark on this idea, I thought I might requisition your own tales illustrating this concept: small power, big abuse, due possibly to the mental collapse of those who are condemned to suffer with just a tiny bit of self-regard over years of service.

My first illustration of this notion comes from a source very close to home. In fact, she was IN my home up until a few years ago when she had the temerity to grow up. The correspondent is my daughter, who now works in the world of business, too, although hers is slightly more dignified than mine. She writes:

“Last weekend, my friend Jenny and I traveled from Manhattan to Westchester County to attend a close friend’s bridal shower. We had bought round trip tickets between Grand Central and New Rochelle stations, which is on the New Haven line, since that was what made the most sense at the time of purchase. The shower went well: food, games, and much merry. Afterwards, it turned out that it made more sense for us to depart from Crestwood, a nearby station on the Harlem line. Years of traveling to and from our parents’ homes in the vicinity had taught us that both destinations cost the exact same amount on the Metropolitan Transit Authority. To the penny. To the millipenny. And, after years of conflict-free MTA travel, we’d learned that the tickets were basically interchangeable. No conductor had ever contended this practice.

No conductor, that is, until this past Sunday, when we met the one brave—nay, militant—soldier of which the proud MTA organization may boast.

High on the residual effects of the bridal shower, with warm weather, chardonnay, and pasta buzzing about our brains, I thoughtlessly handed our New Haven line tickets to the devout Harlem line employee. She took them, and stopped in her stout tracks.

“Do you have a ticket for THIS line?” she demanded. Surprised, Jenny and I stared at her for a moment. “This is for the New Haven line ONLY. It states that right there on the ticket. DO YOU HAVE A TICKET FOR THE HARLEM LINE?” To which Jenny, somewhat without subtlety, replied, “Are you kidding me?”

“NO. I AM NOT KIDDING YOU!” the conductor yelled.

At this point, we took some care to explain to her, quite rationally, that we weren’t trying to get away with anything. In fact, the tickets were of equal value and we’d done this a million times. She, in turn, launched into a fiery tirade about thoughtless fellow conductors who “DON’T CARE ABOUT THEIR JOBS OR THE RULES OF THE MTA!!” I was immediately transported to a mental image of this functionary on her lunch break, cramming a tuna fish sandwich down her throat while perched above the titanium toilet in the train’s lavatory, muttering to herself while the other MTA employees leap through the aisles, throwing money at commuters and IGNORING THE RULES.

She removed a laminated pamphlet from her front shirt pocket.

“I want you to read these rules,” she seethed.

“Really,” I said. “We believe you. It’s just never been an issue.”

“Well APPARENTLY, you DON’T! READ IT!”

With no other option than either to comply or be thrown off the train, Jenny accepted the leaflet and gave it a mollifying glance. “Uh huh,” she said. “Okay. I see.”

“I don’t know if you UNDERSTAND that or not, but that’s what it says.”

We looked at her in amazement. “No, no, we understand it, thanks.”

“Now,” she continued with quiet menace. “What I DO, in these SITUATIONS…I will take your tickets as a courtesy…” We began to thank her, but she waved our gratitude away. “…As a COURTESY! AND IF I EVER SEE YOU AGAIN WITH NEW HAVEN LINE TICKETS…” Once again her voice deepened to a threatening growl. “You have been warned.” Pale and trembling, we thanked her and mentally willed her to leave. After a long glare, she finally did so, mumbling to herself as she went down the aisle, ““It’s just that people don’t care! The conductors, that is. The rules! The rules! The MTA!” Her grumbling got softer and softer as she made her way down the row and out of the car with a definitive CLANG!”

That’s the story. But it’s only one. I am put in mind of the American Airlines gate agent who recently made an entire planeful of people wait for the redeye while he had a pleasant conversation with a flight attendant.

So many other ripe examples rear up in my imagination. All aggravating. All illustrations of this principle of power.

Got one?

Just a little story this morning. I knew this guy, see. And he was a yutz. We banged skulls quite a few years ago, where he demonstrated a willingness to screw people when it was unnecessary to do so. I make this distinction because as you know in business it is sometimes necessary to screw people. This was not the case here. This guy kind of cut a swath through whatever work he was doing, did what he needed to do to make himself look good, which he wasn’t, lied when it suited him, pointed fingers when things didn’t work out, was a general hose bag.

Years passed, and I watched as this worm popped out of one corporate apple after another. And no, this isn’t a jab at Apple. It’s a metaphor. Worm pops out of an otherwise perfectly good piece of fruit. Sees another one, all shiny and new, on an adjacent branch of the global tree of corporate capitalism. Crawls out of his existing hole and cleverly burrows his way into the next. That’s what I’m talking about.

So anyhow, a few years ago, this guy pops up at a relatively well-known retail outfit in a large midwestern city that shall remain nameless. At the time, the firm is doing quite well and the guy I’m talking about takes a nice profile, giving speeches, head shot in the trades, that kind of thing.

Then, as you all know, the climate changes, the economy does whatever the hell you think it’s doing, and suddenly retailers aren’t percolating anymore, in fact they’re doing pretty lousy, including this company that now houses the wormish dude I’m telling you about. Sure enough, after about six months of this, the guy pokes his nose around and sees that another place, in another industry entirely, may be interested in whatever it is he’s selling. Time to go. We all get that. Bloom is off the rose. Too bad. So sad. See ya. Don’t wanna be ya.

That’s not the problem. You gotta go where the action is, particularly if you’re an action junkie and opportunist. The thing I loved, because it confirmed my faith in the reliability of Character, was the way he did it. About a week before he bolted, a little piece of slime appeared in an online aggregator/terminator dedicated to hurting anything it writes about. The jist of the post, which everybody in that particular industry read, was that this guy was leaving his current firm because he could no longer associate himself with his current employer. Why? Because he simply could not stand being in the same company with a Chairman whose moral lifestyle was not above reproach. There was more schmutz, but that was the long and the short of it. This fellow was simply TOO decent, TOO clean and upstanding, to deal with the moral insufficiencies of his superior.

Of course, the piece was unsourced. My guy’s fingerprints were nowhere on it. Thus he managed to get publicity for himself and to besmirch the place that had paid for his life for the last four or five years and the crazy, beseiged individual who runs it.

When you gotta go, you gotta go, I guess. But this way? I don’t think so.

But what do you think? I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who think I’m a total weenie here. Aren’t we all in business for ourselves? Aren’t we supposed to do whatever it takes to get ahead? Don’t we live in a world unguided by loyalty, sentiment and personal honor? Doesn’t it make sense to play to unsourced, unedited, unscrupulous internet to our benefit?

Aren’t those who may think otherwise, like, total losers?

1. I like reading all the articles in the normally sycophantic Apple (AAPL) magazines promising to fix the 10 Things You Hate About Leopard.

2. I like to think about the meetings they had at Apple, in which the Development people fought with the Marketing people over whether the product was ready to be brought to market. Obviously, the Marketing people won.

3. I like to imagine what life is like for the Apple PR Department, which does such a good job positioning the company as an innovator and a creative force, and now has to deal with hoards of infuriated people who don’t understand why stuff that used to work, doesn’t anymore.

4. I like to hunt around for my wireless connection when it disappears from my Airport toolbar. Where did it go? Who are all these other people whose wireless networks appear, where mine does not? Should I get to know them? Do they mind me poaching their hookups when mine disappears?

5. I like wondering why my file sharing protocol between computers on my home network seems just ever so slightly kerflooey.

6. I like bumping into comments online and in the magazines confirming that the file sharing protocol in Leopard is a little kerflooey.

7. I like the mental picture of technicians at Apple working day and night to fix the teeny-weeny crazy stuff that people seem to care about — like whether certain features display their contents in alphabetical order from the top down or the bottom up, or why there is no built-in growl notification in I-Chat. How much dough is spent to correct issues like that?

8. I like realizing there are many, many people out there who are angry that the Dock has become transparent. There must not be enough problems in this world.

9. I like the idea that a whole little industry has popped up of third-party developers who are making money providing fixes to Leopard. That’s what I call stimulating the economy!

10. I like going back to my old laptop, firing it up and going back to the operating system that served me well for so many years. Give ‘em hell, Tiger!

You can almost hear the Yahoos from YHOO as MSFT’s bid dropped away, along with about 20% of its market cap. Big credit, as is to be expected in any matter related to cyberspace, is given to GOOG, which reportedly acted in the background as a support against the Gates of Destruction.

It is a great feeling indeed when an unwanted acquisitional incursion is thwarted. If one is inside a company under this kind of assault, the tension, resentment, anger and determination not to see one’s nation fall is quite intense. And when the Huns retreat from the battlements and head back to the barbarian highlands, it’s high-fives all round, definitely.

And many thanks to those who helped repel the invader. And it’s only natural to let the friendly ally inside the castle — for conversation, celebration and maybe even a little synergistic planning.

About 20 years ago, a corporation of which I am more than superficially aware also sustained an ongoing assault from a hated competitor. For a while, this ancient enterprise looked wobbly, doomed to fall before the barbarian invader from the South.

Then a White Knight came along on a very tiny steed and, with great legerdemain and fiduciary savoir faire, sent the Dark Lord back to from whence he came. There was wassailing all around, and the friend was invited in to purchase a nice piece of the castle itself. Before long, he owned the whole thing, burned most of it to the ground and built a parking lot over its remains. It was left to subsequent owners of the place to put up an almost entirely new structure, which is probably for the best anyhow. Those old castles are hard to heat.

This has nothing to do with whether all the Yahooing and Googling about Microsoft’s retreat is warranted. For now, I’m sure it is. But sometimes it pays to be careful just who you give the keys to the castle, even if they are the most truly awesome dudes in the land when the dragons are flying.

In about a month, my new book will be published. It’s called Executricks: or How To Retire While You’re Still Working. Compact, entertaining and wise, the book will teach you how to live like an executive even if you aren’t one, cleanly, legitimately, creating while you are still in mid-career all the benefits of a retired existence. It will be essential reading for anybody with a heartbeat.

On this site will be a host of entertaining and stimulating features on this topic - quizzes, contests, galleries of famous people who have succeeded bigtime while essentially living the life of the affluent retiree by using a host of Executricks. You will also be offered an opportunity to tell you own stories, as always; how you’ve served the system and beaten it at the same time, maybe even tales about those who did it less elegantly than they might have.

And of course you will be incessantly exhorted to purchase the book via a handy link at the top of the page. I hope you will do so.

All that is in the future, however. Today I would like to finish what began about a year ago and has continued with some energy ever since: the work we have done together on two important topics — the Crazy Bosses we serve and the Bulls**t Jobs we occupy. I have a trove of letters you have sent me on both subjects, many of which are publishable. I will now go back into my archive and work them up, so that we may complete both blogs, bring them to some kind of closure.

This is a big task for me. Fortunately, I travel between California and New York a great deal and should have plenty of time, if I don’t put it off. Then, after a month or so, I will bring together all my new stuff and any new submissions to the blogs that YOU may care to make, and retire both from this page, making way for new things.

The Crazy Bosses and Bulls**t Jobs blogs will not die, no way. They are deep, trenchant, funny, sad, illuminating, chock-a-block with YOUR stories, ideas and tales of woe and triumph. I read somewhere that since we’re in a recession we should all be repurposing things a lot more. That sounds like a good idea. I’m nothing if not a creature of my times.

All of this is a typically long-winded way of inviting all who are reading this to poke around each topic on this site, think about your own experience and those of your friends and enemies, and lob in a few stories if the spirit moves.

Due to the somewhat complex architecture of this site, however, negotiating around these topics and registering your comments and thoughts is not always as easy as it might look. So I’m going to quickly walk you through it.

Crazy Bosses

Go to the main home page and read about the topic here.

Then look at a nice gallery of Crazy Bosses, starting with Stalin here.

You may then read about the Crazy Bosses that your fellow readers have enjoyed here.

and finally, submit your own stories here.

Bulls**t Jobs

Likewise, start your Bulls**t Jobs investigations here.

Then look at a horrifying panoply of them here.

Then read about your fellow bulls**tters here.

And then submit your own here.

While you’re doing your thing, I’ll do what I said — go back into the e-mines and dig out the rest of the material that’s lying around glittering in the digital caverns. I’ll report back when I’m as done as I want to be.

Oh and by the way: anybody wishing simply to send me their crazy boss stories or bulls**t jobs without the comfy mediation of this blog may do so by sending me an email to bingblog@gmail.com.

That’s bingblog@gmail.com. Please mark your e-mail either Crazy Bosses or Bulls**t Jobs. Or, you know, if you just want to write me to say hi that’s okay too.

Have a great weekend. In fact, start now, huh?

As some of you might have been able to tell, yesterday’s blog was not a random exercise. It was written in the near dark just after dawn, as I looked forward to a day that was to include a meeting that began with breakfast and ended well after lunch. The meeting did take place. I followed many of the tips I offered to you. Some of them worked to alleviate to pain of the day. Others did not. And there were some unforeseen consequences that materialized as a result of the ordeal. I’d like to look at those now.

During the meeting, I began to experience existential discomfort well before the first break. This manifests itself as an intense desire to leave the room and walk aimlessly about the executive floor. To do so before one hour has elapsed is considered highly bad form, since all conceivable excuses seem premature at that juncture. It’s too soon to hit the Men’s Room (unless one has a condition of some kind that he or she would like the group to know about) and likewise too early to have developed a crisis severe enough to merit such a quick exit. 

So I sat. The discussion went around the table. The feelings of impatience and anxiety grew. I eventually had to get up in a thoughtful manner, go to the sideboard, and assemble a plate of berries that was altogether way too large. Too many berries make me feel sort of crazy. There was a great book called The Phantom Toll booth I read when I was a boy. It posited the existence of a stew that made one hungrier the more it was consumed. That’s what berries do to me. You eat and eat and eat, and then the plate is empty