Romance in the Halls of Balmer High

Knowing the Language is Important for Closing any Deal

In other news, I met this lady last night and we were all like, “yeah,” and we started getting down to business. She wanted to get Linked In and I said “I don’t know if I have the bandwidth for that, baby,” and she started talking about the tightening economy as we went back to her office. We discussed which verticals to get into and she told me her ideas about horizontal positioning and I said that she better watch out cuz her 1st mover advantages might just get leapfrogged when I come from behind to achieve market penetration. She asked if she could see it and I said, “You can’t just see it, you can 5 C’s it. Yeah.” My powerpoint was ready; I was employing a growth strategy. She showed me to her spreadsheets. I showed her my deliverables. We tried push and pull strategies. She had some nice low-hanging fruit. I was SWOTing her left and right and she cried out for more so I gave her all 5 of Porter’s forces. I made her call me Google Doc and I diagnosed the problem with her Microsoft Access. I had a killer application that I leveraged again and again until I was out of cycles. Then I realized, what I thought was a star was actually a cash cow and a dog. I went for a successful exit and I said, “Ping you later, baby.”

Photo of Assailants Fleeing the Scene

Case Competition Guru Ian Courtnage Enters Middle School Case Competition – Finishes 2nd

Ian Courtnage at Competition

Adding to his continued string of close calls, self-proclaimed case competition guru Ian Courtnage finished 2nd in the annual Sea-Fair Scholastic Case Competition. “I don’t know what happened!” Said Courtnage, “When I entered the Middle School Basketball Tournament I took 2nd. I thought this would be different!” Of the 28 case competitions Ian has entered, Courtnage has yet to finish higher than 2nd place. “I spent 80 extra hours preparing for this competition, but how can you compete against a team like that? I had an options matrix – they had a diorama of the solar system.” Courtnage has lodged an official complaint with the judging committee, arguing that the winning team – 4th graders from Coe Elementary – didn’t meet the minimum height requirement to enter the competition. The committee is set to review his appeal on February 30th, 2010.

PACCAR Hall Construction Update by Pete Dukes

Pete Dukes on Lunch Break at the Site

Hey Guys,

PACCAR Hall construction has hit rock bottom, literally. I guess I've been holding the damn blueprint wrong this whole time. How the hell could I tell though? The shapes look so cool any way you hold it! The architect and my workers kept telling me to flip the blueprint over, but I thought it was just another practical joke like the time they lined my hard hat with super-glue or when they told me to test the wet cement by standing in it for an hour and then tried to back a truck over me. Those guys are such pranksters!

So it turns out that the building is "inverted." I did a little research and it turns out that’s a highly technical term that apparently means “upside-down”. We just realized it this week when one of the 13 guys we pay to stand around and smoke got dizzy, bent over, and said the building looked like it might be upside down. And it totally was! Thank God we noticed it now though, because the geology department came by and said that if we had completed the fifth floor, the sixth floor could have busted right through the earth's mantle and into the outer core, which would flood the entire campus with liquid hot magma. Now I'm no scientist, but I can tell you that would have sucked!

I think we can fix it. But if not, don’t worry. We have a plan. We just rename it PACCAR Hole. It would be super earthquake proof. Thank God this is a university right? The last time I was fired for doing this! Here’s to learning! Trial and error, baby!

Oh yeah, it's gonna be crazy loud this week too - I'm talking AC/DC concert loud!

Rock On,

Pete Dukes