24 - The Show of Diminishing Returns

I'm about to write a review on the hit television show 24. (Yes, I know I'm years behind the masses.) Anyways, I'm MBA student Kara Franklin - and my Fall Break felt like the longest Fall Break of my life. All events in this blog occur in abbreviated real time.

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At the recommendation of many, I finally broke down and watched the first season of 24. I had a week off for fall break and thought, perfect! I'll get to watch the whole thing, with no commercials. No distractions. It'll be great.

I was really looking forward to my 24 experience. I love action films and anything to do with espionage. Plus everyone and I mean everyone told me I was going to be forever changed after watching this series. I'd become so addicted that I'd have to watch all of the seasons.

Day 1 of Fall Break, I arranged my junk food on the coffee table, popped in disc one, and began my journey down action movie lane

12am - 1am:
Wow!! The setup. Crazy. This is great! I'm hooked!

1am - 6am:
Who knew so much could go down in the middle of the night?! I marveled at the intricate plot which was only getting better by the minute, and loved that I had 18 more hours to enjoy. At the same time I was kicking myself for not grabbing Season 2. What was I going to do when I finished that final episode?!

7am - ?
At about 7ish I started to loose momentum. Then by 8 or 9 in the morning I finished my last glass of the 24 Kool-Aid. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. The honeymoon was over. Why, you might be wondering to yourself? EVERYONE loves 24. Well there are many reasons, but I've highlighted the main ones down below:

Reason #1:
Okay, so I'm no skeptic. I'm not. My favorite show right now is about an alien from outer space living a double life as a Kansas farmboy by day and a superhero by... well I guess he's technically both all of the time, but anyways. The point is that I love that show which goes to show that as long as I have a little advance warning, I can adjust my frame of reference in order to maximize my media viewing experience. I didn't really do to much adjusting for 24. Mostly because whenever I watch anything having to do with special divisions of the government dealing in covert operations, I always think to myself, somewhere this is actually happening. Our CIA agents are doing this crazy 007 stuff while I'm asleep soundly in my bed, completely oblivious. I find that exciting. Every night I almost die, but at the last minute some trained professional swoops in and takes out the bad guy removing me yet again from harm's way. My point: I feel like I went into this with a fairly open mind.

I was eating it up. All of it. Except there was one thing I couldn't get past. Again, I'm no skeptic. But I dunno about this 24 hour premise. I mean I've pulled some crazy all-nighters in my day. I'm talking all night study sessions right up until an 8:30am final. So I know more than anyone that it is possible to go on very little sleep. But after that final, you'd better believe I was in a coma in my dorm room for the rest of the day.

The only way you could get 24 solid hours out of me, I don't care how exciting you made my day, is if I'd woken up at 11:59pm. Then maybe I'd be able to stick it out. But if in the opening scene, I'm getting ready for bed I'm assuming that means I was up all day, so you're going to get 8, maybe 9 hours out of me at best, and then I'd be MIA for a few episodes, cause there's absolutely no way... And It was so inconsistent. Some people looked tired, others didn't. Jack Bauer was SO tired that he nodded off sitting up at noon, but seemed surprisingly refreshed as he neared the end of his day. No one fell asleep at the wheel. I feel like adrenaline could only take you so far. After that, I'd better see you doing a few lines of something, otherwise, its just not believable.

Reason #2:
If you're going to create a show that takes place over the course of 24 hours in "real time" then perhaps you should take EXTRA care to ensure that your cast looks the same - only filthier more haggard looking - while filming a season. People had longer hair in some episodes, shorter hair, different styles. I saw no 5 o'clock shadows. My favorite - One character lopped off about 4 inches of her hair from one hour to the next, and not only that, but there was NO mention of it in the script.

Reason #3:
How do you get kidnapped twice in one day?! Why didn't anyone ever need to use the bathroom? And why on earth could no one kill Jack Bauer? He was the easiest of targets, always wandering around dark fields or hiding out in dark alleys alone, unarmed, and screaming into his cell phone. For a special forces federal agent, he sure wasn't very discreet. Heck, give me a gun and I'll take him out. Anything to shave off a few hours...

Reason #4:

***** SPOLIER ALERT*****

Nina, the mole... Really? Do you seriously expect me to believe that amidst all the confusion of trying to capture everyone in "real time", the cameraman conveniently forgot to include footage of Nina colluding with the enemy? And what you're also telling me is that if Jack Bauer had just killed Nina when the people she was working for told him to in the first place, everyone could have gone home and gotten some much needed sleep? Somehow I doubt that.

Yes, despite my growing loathing for the show, with each passing hour, I still finished it. I figured once I'd hit the 8th hour it was really too late to turn back. Plus I guess I was grasping at some thin glimmer of hope that there would be some twist at the end, that would tie it all together and make sense of the sheer madness of it all... the outlandish storyline, poor editing, cast of zombies. But that hope was never realized.

24 hours of excitement. Seemed like a good idea at first. Like eating a carton of ice cream. First couple of bowls are damn good. Then after a while you just feel sick.

From now on I think I'll just stick to a show that doesn't insult my intelligence... Thank God for Smallville.

CAPTCHA If They Can!

Picture this. I'm online trying to order tickets for a concert. I fill out all of the necessary information and then I get to the point right before the order screen. Of course they want to make sure that I'm not spamming the site, which is fine. Precautions are good. I'll jump through one extra hoop. Give me a series of numbers and letters, and I'll retype them into a little box below, so that you know my purchase is legit.

Before I continue, I just need to give props to the genius(es) behind this ground-breaking technology. I mean seriously, I can't imagine that there would be ANY way for anyone to get around this set-up. I bet this is coming straight from NASA. No one and I mean NO one will be purchasing tickets from this site without clearance from CAPTCHA.

So anyways, I stare at my series of letters and numbers and think to myself... if only I'd had the foresight to drop acid before venturing on my ticket buying journey. Because only then would I be able to decipher this strange Lewis Carroll* font.

Beads of sweat start to form at my brow as I stare hard at the code. Come on Kara, come on. You can do this. You can crack this. I see that that's a z... but is that another Z or a 7?





Okay, no I can't crack this one. Refresh.






Damnit!! What is this? What does this say?!

I put off my purchase and decided to get to the bottom of this madness. What the heck did CAPTCHA stand for anyways? Wiki Answers!!

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart...

Oh really?? Did I miss a stage in my mental development that would have permitted me to read these characters? Had my Speak & Spell led me down the wrong path of learning yet again?

Then Wikipedia goes on to say -

"Another way to make segmentation difficult is to crowd symbols together. This, though, is often very difficult for humans to read..."

Hmm... seems a little counter productive to me, but what do I know? I'm just a human being trying to order a couple of concert tickets for me and my mom.

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*Disclaimer: There has been no documented evidence to show that Lewis Carroll relied on drugs to gain inspiration. One would argue that his book "Through the Looking Glass" is evidence enough, else how could any man come up with such utter nonsense... But, I've researched this, and its just not true.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

Now let me get this straight... Life is handing me lemons, I'm assuming for free... just flat out giving me lemons... And you want me to turn around and purchase sugar, a large stirring spoon and a container so that I can make lemonade. Don't get me wrong, I like lemonade just as much as the next person, but that doesn't make much business sense.

If you were to tell me to make lemonade and sell it, maybe I could see that. But to make lemonade just to turn around and drink it? I'm not sure I see the true value in that. And I'm sure any ten year old who's run a successful lemonade stand will back me up on this one.

I've been ridiculously stressed out trying to find a job post business school in this crazy economy. If life hands me lemons, I'm cutting one of those babies up and putting a few slices in a vodka tonic. Then I'm selling the rest to a ten year old girl, so she can make the lemonade.

You will not make a monkey out of me

For those of you who are already in business school, you'll be able to relate. For those of you thinking about applying to business school, think of this as a head's up. For those of you who want nothing to do with business school you can still enjoy this. :)

Harvard Business School writes the majority of the business school cases. Cases are stories about businesses. They frame a problem, give you loads of information to weed through, or sometimes, not that much information, and pose a question to you at the end. What should Firm A do?

The catch, these problems have already been solved, but you don't get to find out what happened until the end of class on the day of the case discussion. Your job in reading these cases is to come up with solutions for these companies, using only the data available. That sounds easy enough. Let's see, I'm 28. I'm a second year business school student. A BS in Chemical Engineering. I've had absolutely no prior exposure to business. You're having trouble expanding Disney? No problem. Just give me about twenty pages of background info on your 80 year old company, some financial data, and a couple of pictures of your products, and I'll take care of it. Leave it all to me.

When I first got to school, this was very daunting. I never knew were to begin. One false move and Disney would no longer exist as we knew it! But then, as I started going through these HBS cases, I noticed a commonality. There was a trick. The answer was never intuitive. Ever.

Example:

"Jeff McManahan put down the phone, then leaned back in his chair. That was Joanna Williams, the CEO of ENS Manufacturing. The numbers were in and they weren't pretty. She wanted results. McMahanan was the new COO hired to turn the company around. He was given a timeline of six months and he was already coming up to the end of the third month. He knew that if he didn't do something and soon, it would cost him his job. He turned to Jamal Green and Wei Chu, head of Marketing and Sales respectively. "Guys, its time we analyzed our business model to see what changes need to be made to run the business more effectively. Hope you guys weren't planning on going home tonight, cause it looks like we're going to be here awhile."

So then you as a business school student analyze the business -

Marketing: Rather than invest in an advertising agency, they have school children design all of their promotional materials as part of an after school program initiative. They then photocopy the designs and send them to customers. These promotional ads highlight (quite literally in some cases) the products' features and benefits.

Sales: Salaried, no commision

Operations: Instead of people they use monkeys to build their products

Packaging: Again, monkeys...


You finish reviewing the data... Talk about red flags. No wonder they're doing poorly, you think to yourself. Good thing you came along. So, you go through the case, picking out all that needs to be changed. Sure monkeys are cute, but are they reliable? You begrudgingly get rid of the monkeys. Add commission into the mix for the sales team; decrease salary. You make some other minor changes in their business model in ordinance with child labor laws. . You show up to class, sure that you have done all you could to try and save ENS Manufacturing from an unfortunate demise. You spend an hour exchanging ideas with your peers.

Then at the end the professor says. Want to know what happened?

Heck yes I want to know what happened to these pack of idiots.

The professor puts up some slides. Three bullet points:

- They left marketing the same.
- They kept the monkeys.
- Raised base salary and added a commission of 20%.

ENS Manufacturing is now the largest manufacturer of X products in the US and they are going to be expanding internationally this year.

What the-?

I can't help but think that Harvard Business School is trying to pull one over on all of us. They produce all of these business school cases. Send them to the rest of the top tier schools. Meanwhile they have the real cases in their classes. What NOT to do in the real world. I'm on to you Harvard, and tempting as it may be, you will not fool me into using monkeys in my business.

Can you hear me now?

Ahh, the magical phrase coined by that little Verizon man with black rimmed glasses. Can you hear me now.... that phrase really is magical. I don't know what it is. I could be in the arctic in a cave, no towers for miles and if the person on the other end is having trouble hearing me, then all I have to do is move one or two steps away and say, "Can you hear me now?"

Et voila!

They can hear me! I get a nice clear "Yes" from their end. Kudos to Verizon for being so great, even in the arctic.

There's only one problem. That's ALL that person hears. Because as soon as I diverge from that famed five word sequence, the spell is broken, and the evil Queen Poorreception regains control...

Nothing takes the excitment out of a storytelling like having to say, "What's the last thing you heard?" Cause what's your friend going to do? Paraphrase. And adults don't paraphrase like kids.

If you ask a kid to tell where you left off, they paraphrase but in this excited way -
"The little prince had just fought off the dragon!!!! And he was going through the woods of FEEEEAAAARRRRRRR. And then he came up to a house... a dark dark house..."

You look at the kid with big eyes. "Go on..."

No, when adults pharaphrase they get that monotone voice -
"You walked into the party and he had that girl with him. So you decided to pretend like you didn't see them. But he'd just walked up to you. And then something about a widget maybe? But I don't know, I didn't hear anything after that."

So you start up where your friend tells you you left off, not before taking a minute or so to try to recount what in your story sounded like 'widget'. At any rate, its not the same. Momentum has been lost. The window of opportunity where you have your friend's undivded attention has been closed. So you just quickly wrap up what could have been a great story.

I could possibly have great conversations using only the words, "Can you hear me now"... If I was Chinese and "Can you hear me now" could actually mean 100 different things with a change in intonation. But alas, I am not. So it means just that. Its like some kind of sick joke. Sure Verizon doesn't drop calls. But so what. I think I'd rather have the frigging call dropped so I'm not pouring my heart out to dead air about the ex Derek and his new girlfriend Bridget. Come on Verizon. Pick your battles and drop a call once in a while.

Before and After Photos

Why is it that whenever someone is getting a makeover, the before picture looks like a Nick Nolte mug shot taken with a camera phone, and the after picture is all glossy and in soft focus. The lighting is amazing and the person is smiling. It so annoying. Just once, I want to see a picture of someone "at their worst" in normal lighting, with them smiling, just no makeup and hair pulled back, instead of teased up and every which way.

But I guess if they did that, then the cosmetics industry would lose billions of dollars. They rely on all of those people on an endless search for metamorphosis in a jar. Imagine? A world where people accepted themselves for who they really are...

Don't be fooled by the poor lighting and angry scowl. Really people, if you put lipstick on a pig...

So, either embrace what you were born with, or hit up a plastic surgeon. After all, Bobbi, Laura and MAC can only do so much.