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A
Queensland jackeroo is overseeing his animals in remote territory
when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud
towards him. The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci
shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window
and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many
cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a
calf?"
The
jackaroo looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks
at his peacefully grazing animals and calmly answers, "Sure,
why not?"
The
yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,
connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and 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. The young man then 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 a
MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet
with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives
a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150 page
report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and
finally turns to the Jackeroo and says - "You have exactly
1,586 cows and calves."
"That's
right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves" says
the Jackeroo.
He
watches the young man select one of the animals and looks
on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his
car.
Then
the Jackeroo says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell
you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my
calf?"
The young
man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay,
why not?"
"You
work for the Australian Government" says the Jackeroo.
"Wow!
That's correct" says the yuppie, "but how did
you guess that?"
"No
guessing required" answered the jackeroo. "You
showed up here even though nobody called you, you want to
get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never
asked. You used all kinds of expensive equipment that clearly
somebody else paid for. You tried to show me how much smarter
than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows .
. . . this is a flock of sheep. Now give me back my dog!"
(11.1.09)
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