Sunday, January 27, 2008

Bubba In Paris

Bubba, a furniture dealer from Tennessee, decided to expand the line of furniture in his store, so he decided to go to Paris to see what he could find.

After arriving in Paris he met with some manufacturers and selected a line that he thought would sell well back home in Jackson, Tennessee . To celebrate the new acquisition, he decided to visit a small bistro and have a glass of wine As he sat enjoying his wine, he noticed that the small place was quite crowded, and that the other chair at his table was
the only vacant seat in the house.

Before long, a very beautiful young Parisian girl came to his table, asked him something in French (which he did not understand), and motioned toward the chair.

He invited her to sit down. He tried to speak to her in English, but she did not speak his language so, after a couple of minutes of trying to communicate with her, he took a napkin and drew a picture of a wine glass and showed it to her. She nodded, and he ordered a glass of wine for her.

After sitting together at the table for a while, he took another napkin, and drew a picture of a plate with food on it, and she nodded. They left the bistro and found a quiet cafe that featured a small group playing romantic music. They ordered dinner, after which he took another napkin and drew a picture of a couple dancing. She nodded, and they got up to dance. They danced until the cafe closed and the band was packing up.

Back at their table, the young lady took a napkin and drew a picture of a four-poster bed. To this day, Bubba has no idea how she figured out he was in the furniture business.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Quote of the Day

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Monday, January 14, 2008

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly, a brand new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Bryony suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out of the window and asks the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the man - obviously a yuppie - then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers: "Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell-phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. Then the young man opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds he receives an email on his Palm Pilot, that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet, with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry, and after a few minutes, receives another response. Finally, he prints out a full colour, 150 page report on his high-tech, miniaturized HP Laser Jet printer, then turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly 1586 sheep."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep," says the shepherd. He watches as the young man selects one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man tries to stuff it into the trunk of his car.

Then the shepherd says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"

The young man thinks about it for a moment, then says: "OK, why not?"

"You're a consultant," says the shepherd.

"Wow - that's correct," says the Yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you, you wanted to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked and you don't know anything about my business. Now give me back my dog."