Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The Techie & the Shepard -Good one

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a
brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a
young man in a Prada suit, Gucci shoes, Dior sunglasses and D+G tie,
leans out the window and asks the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how
many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers: "Sure. Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,
connects it to his AT&T cell phone, 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 a n 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 hundreds of complex formulae. He uploads all of this
data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a Few minutes, receives
a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-colour,150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the shepherd and says:
"You have exactly 1,586 sheep".
That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep," says the
shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks
on amused as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car.

Then the shepherd says to the young man: "Hey, if I can tell you
exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?" The
young man thinks about it for a second and the n says: "Okay, why not?".
"You're a consultant," says the shepherd.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie. "But how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required," answers the shepherd. "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, and you know f*ck-all about my
business."
"Now give me back my sheep."

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