dilbert archives
“Then we program the web site using a fast guy in tights and a movie about coffee.”
Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss, explaining the company’s use of Flash and javascript…

posted by ted on Thursday, Jan 17, 2008

“Never tell anyone we don’t have enough resources to do a project. It makes us look lame. Instead, say we have a fixed capacity that is already dedicated to higher priorities. That makes whoever asked us for help look lame.”
The Pointy Haired Boss, instructing Dilbert and associates. This approach NOT recommended… (Thanks for the link, Sharky!)

posted by ted on Tuesday, Dec 04, 2007

“Can a business-led project management process optimize our strategic core issues?”
Ted the Generic Guy illustrating the truth that you can speak much but say little. (From Scott Adams’ Dilbert calendar for October 25, 2007.)

posted by ted on Friday, Oct 26, 2007

“I suggested a few cleverly designed, hypnosis-inspired phrases that were the linguistic equivalent of Kung Fu.”
Scott Adams, In Over My Head, on the Dilbert Blog

posted by jason on Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006

Unified Theory of Everything Financial

Paul B. Farrell of MarketWatch.com makes a funny but well-grounded case for Dilbert winning the Nobel Prize in economics for his “Unified Theory of Everything Financial”. Dilbert’s creator Scott Adams outlined 9 points in cartoon that he claims is “all you need to know about personal investing”. The points are short and surprisingly simple (unlike everything else financial):

  1. Make a will
  2. Pay off your credit cards
  3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
  4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
  5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
  6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
  7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
  8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
  9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

Farrell opines:

The truth is, most investors have little or no interest in Wall Street’s casino action; all the time-consuming research, the sophisticated stock-picking tricks, the costly trading necessary to play in a market drowning in 10,000 stocks, 18,000 funds and more than 100,000 bonds. Most investors have jobs and kids as their top priority. Moreover, Dilbert’s simple two-fund portfolio compares favorably with our other lazy portfolios.

Awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever read such a simple take on being financially sound.

posted by jason on Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006