It’s that time of year at Microsoft when managers are busily preparing reviews of their reports and preparing for the big stack ranking.

Yesterday, my manager sent out an email asking his reports to email him with their accomplishments in the past year to help jog his memory. This arms him with important information when he goes to the mat for us arguing why we’re more deserving of a higher ranking than some other manager’s sad report.

Here was my response. In the past year, I…

  • Escaped from a black hole. Twice. I forgot my jacket in there and had to go get it.
  • Discovered an albino polar bear.
  • Proved Fermat’s Last Theorem as well as his penultimate theorem.
  • Found Waldo. And made him change out of that ridiculous shirt and hat. Discovered he’s really Harry Potter.
  • Unified gravity and quantum mechanics while watching Jersey Shore to make it a challenge.
  • Invented cold fusion as well as luke warm fusion.
  • Passed the turing test using a computer made of legos.
  • Finished World of Warcraft on an Atari 2600.
  • Counted all the elements within an uncountable set of Hilbert spaces.
  • Hunted a magical unicorn with my bare hands. Drank its blood. And now I’m magical.

Not to be outdone, Steve Sanderson replied with the following:

Oh yeah? That’s nothing. I successfully submitted an expense claim using the online expenses tool.

Color me impressed!

Friday Appreciation

And for the weekly thing I appreciate, this week I appreciate the word hyperbole. It sounds like hyperbola, but is a totally different thing. Be sure not to confuse the two.

What I did above is hyperbole, while this is a hyperbola.

hyperbola

Have a nice weekend!