Sunday morning 10:50: watching the SecDef on Meet the Press. Trying to

watch, that is — it ain’t easy. It’s like the “saddlebags” scene in A Man

In Full.

Getting flashbacks from my working days. A project is going pear shaped.

You call in the project manager to explain himself. Shouldn’t he have

budgeted for more people? “Well, you know, too many people can just get in

each other’s way…” When can we expect the next deliverable? “It’s

really, really hard to put a time frame on this…” Weren’t the original

time estimates way over optimistic? “I don’t myself recall giving eny input

to those estimates…” Shouldn’t the users be up to speed now with

training? “Well, they have their own priorities, we can only lean on them

so much…”

That’s the meeting right before the one where you dump the project and fire

the project manager.