Favourite Daily Dilbert's
I get a daily Dilbert cartoon by email (thanks to
Dick de Ridder for organising
the feed from the Dilbert site)
Here I collect the Dilbert cartoons I really liked. I leave it to you to guess
why.
Also available are some Dilbert-like quotes from
real life managers, collected by a magazine that ran a "Dilbert-quotes" contest.
Quantifying the value of research
Don't we all have a workpackage on this in all our EU projects?
Maybe we should just hand in the following cartoon as our final deliverable...
Procedures
I use this to explain to my students why A* is a good search algorithm:
Procedures
Ever worked in a large organisation?
Delegating
I now an entire research lab that's being run in this way
(and no, it's not mine!)
Teleconfs
I would never do this during teleconfs, would I?
Mating by cell-phone app
This has been applied to me!
(and you know who you are! 
)
Trying to get in touch
me = Ed Bigston?
Benchmarking
Appropriate for startups and EU projects alike
Ostrich policies
Workload
Says it all...
Cognitive dissonance
One of the best illustrations of mankinds tendency towards reduction
of cognitive dissonance!
Travel expenses
Admittedly, the rules at the VU are slightly better...
Ph.D. supervision?
Where we have all our committee meetings
Project phases
Yes, I'm helping to manage a large project...
The sweet nectar of the illusion of progress
Accurate numbers
Anybody done any time-sheet writing recently?
Zen
The final sentence below is the ultimate Dilbert Zen quote...
The illusion of understanding
We've all been at both sides of this...
Who?
Can anybody in the Semantic Web community guess who this reminds me of?
Timewriting
Conference deadlines have exactly the same effect...
Reliable sources
Timewriting
Did I tell you that the VU has just introduced a new time-writing system
?
Stress...
... is just another word for knowledge
Interns
We treat ours better, honestly!
New Year's Day
I hate to admit it....
Leading with words...
It's not worth having a strategy...
Steps to success for the incompetent
Can you recognise... ?
Loneliness
True...Ouch...
It's not the failure that hurts, it's the hope
(and that's more true than you would like...)
Status
I know full professors who behave just like this...
Annual review
I wonder if the people in my group feel this way about their (lack of)
annual reviews...
Setting your own goals
Another very recognisable one...
What's the difference?
The joys of leadership...
Office plants
Hey, that's my plant!
Balancing work and life
A giggle for those who know my New Year resolutions of the recent past..
More PowerPoint syndrome
Status reports
The feeling you get when filling in bi-monthly status reports for EU
projects...
The Internet is full
MFU
Which of the two people in this cartoon is me...
Diary writer
I live with a compulsive log-keeper...
English Genius
I know who this is, really!
False hope
I wonder how they knew about my recent late-nighter..
The accounting Dept.
Almost true!
Upgrading
IT support...
The IT group at the VU is slightly better, fortunately!
Meetings...
For "customers" read ....
Password construction
Grin.
Self-appointed experts
We've all met these people, no?
Knowledge is Power
Unanswered emails?
I didn't answer your email? Now you know why :-)
The gendergap
There is a lesson here for both genders...
Visionary leadership
Can you recognise which SemWeb scientist I have in mind? :-)
The Project Uncertainty Principle
Well known to all coordinators of EU projects
Note-taking mania
Funny for all those who've ever been in a meeting with me..
Self-assessment
A modern-day version of the liar-paradox:-)
Summarising the summaries
This is what grant-proposal writing is like
(and reporting to EU project reviewers:-)
You can't win...
Irrefutable logic.
New babies
This is roughly what it's like (for a while, anyway:-)
Multi-modal communications
Time scheduling
Is email anti-social?
The end of the .com hype
Self-reference
How's this for a Gödel sentence?
The key to happiness...
... is self-delusion.
Control freak
You know who you are :-)
Powerpoint poisoning
If you've ever been to a conference/workshop/tutorial, you know what I mean.
Parttime work
Is this me?
Blame Assignment
A useful warning for the partners in the EU projects which I coordinate:-)
Just funny
Empty presentations
This one is meant for some of my unnamed colleagues anywhere in academia
land.
Just funny
Datamining
Datamining can get you any answer you want...
Internet business
Amnesia
Not just for managers!:
PDA's
I just bought a Palm Pilot (Aug'99) when this appeared:
Organisational structure
This applies to two of the three Universities I've worked at.
Work
The only reward for good work is more work.
Secret numbers
For the mathematicians.
A Greek tragedy
For the classicists.
A self-descriptive cartoon
Think about it!
Web-companies
Two of my closest friends are currently involved in venture-capital funded
Web-oriented companies:
Microsoft
I like the first half of this cartoon best.
Unix techie's
Knowledge Management
(Thanks to Manfred Aben for sending me the second one when I sent him the
first).
E-Commerce
And even more buzzword-bashing:
Software Projects
The Hardrive
