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.

Being Wrong

You know who you are...

Caring Leadership

Distraction

Recognise this?

10.000 hours

Soooo true about science and scientists

Venture capital

I've seen this happening...

Ugly slides

And yes, my slides are always ugly...

Free Will

I hope my course on the Philosophy of Mind (including free will) is a bit less confused...

Jargon Wars

Trust vs. Stupidity

Especially for all colleagues who are now working on trust measures :-)

That sinking feeling...

All scientists know this...

Summer holidays

Yes, I do find the extended European summer holiday season frustrating, you can never get anything done for months on end...

Low hanging fruit

Sooo true! Think of this whenever people do the trendy (and easy) "go for the low hanging fruit" mantra

Balancing work and life

Uncannily appropriate...

PhD examination

Have you seen such examiners as well?

Supporting Departments

The Univ. is about two core tasks: research and teaching. And sometimes it does feel as if we are competing with our supporting depts:

Project Officers, take heed of this section

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted" (Albert Einstein):

10 years, if you're lucky!

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...

Leadership Instinct

The first picture is an immortal quote!

(There's a few more on leadership further down the page as well...)

Time Management

How good are you at saying "no"?

Name search

We've all played this game at proposal-writing time,
(and my colleague Han Reichgelt in Edinburgh must be starring in the first picture)

Software updates

I'm sure he's running Windows!

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 know 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 (2)

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: