Yahoo fires Carol Bartz

Bartz in happier days

As Yahoo continues its swirl down the bowl of failed web ventures, they've just fired CEO Carol Bartz.  We realize Yahoo is desperate, but what on earth were they thinking when they hired Carol?

Bartz was known as a successful exec at Autodesk, a large software company that serves technically oriented businesses, but remains virtually unknown to the world's consumers, Yahoo's target market. From a Wall Street Journal article published in 1992:

Though the world's sixth largest PC software company, Autodesk is hardly a household name for a couple of reasons. One is that it dominates a niche: software that allows relatively inexpensive personal computers to produce powerful models for engineers, architects and other professional designers.

The other reason is Autodesk's founding genius, John Walker, a reclusive programmer who doesn't allow the company to distribute his picture or publish it in its annual report. In a rare interview granted for this article, a prickly Mr. Walker insisted that a reporter sit in front of a video camera, declared that Autodesk claimed a copyright on the ensuing discussion and debated the meaning of each question.

Bartz was brought in from Sun Microsystems as Walker was having a fit over how her predecessor, Alvar Green, was running things.

A year ago, Mr. Walker issued the ultimate in flame mail, a 44-page letter brutally attacking Mr. Green for allegedly trying to bolster short-term profits by neglecting investment in new products and marketing. Mr. Green later decided to resign, but stayed on until the selection of Ms. Bartz, 43, who formerly ran worldwide field operations for Sun Microsystems Inc.

Ironically, Bartz reports she was rudely dismissed from Yahoo with a phone call.

We give Carol full credit for positive results in Autodesk's difficult environment.  That environment, however,  couldn't have been more different than Yahoo's.  

Update:  Yahoo stock up on news of Bartz firing.

Update #2:  Yahoo has now been put up for sale.

Is there gas in the car?

1969:  Owsley (hat), Garcia

Owsley Stanley, believed to be the inspiration for Steely Dan's  Kid Charlemagne, has died in a car crash in his adopted home of Australia.  Owlesy was thought to be 76 years old.

While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That's when you turned the world around
Did you feel like Jesus
Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes

On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home
Every A-Frame had your number on the wall
You must have had it all
You'd go to L.A. on a dare
And you'd go it alone
Could you live forever
Could you see the day
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away

CHORUS:
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne

Now your patrons have all left you in the red
Your low rent friends are dead
This life can be very strange
All those dayglow freaks who used to paint the face
They've joined the human race
Some things will never change
Son you were mistaken
You are obsolete
Look at all the white men on the street

CHORUS

Clean this mess up else we'll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get them all out of here
Is there gas in the car
Yes, there's gas in the car
I think the people down the hall
Know who you are

Careful what you carry
'Cause the man is wise
You are still an outlaw in their eyes

CHORUS

IGY explained

If you weren't keeping up to date with My Weekly Reader back in 1958, you may have been puzzled by Donald Fagen's 1982 hit "I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)".  Fagen's first post-Steely Dan solo album, "The Nightfly",  also featured a song about a party in a fallout shelter.  You shouldn't be surprised to learn that "The Nightfly" is still played frequently here at South of 5 and 20.

Greg Sullivan relates 1982's "I.G.Y." to a look back at 2010 New Year's predictions.   He hits the shot from NBA territory:

The IGY was the International Geophysical Year, a kind of nebulous, let's all be scientific together exercise from 1957 to 1958. It hoped that if we assembled all the guys who operated slide rules (then) like we text-message with our thumbs (now), it would function as an “apolitical, non-nationalistic, scientifically oriented entity,” and make a great leap forward in our understanding of the earth and its atmosphere.

Oh well. We’ve gone off the graphite and glitter rails over the earth and its atmosphere since then, but I sleep better knowing that after eighteen months of the scientific and diplomatic version of a college dorm room bull session, the governments of Argentina, Australia Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the USSR, Great Britain and the United States of America solemnly declared they wouldn't put nuclear weapons in Antarctica. Along those lines, I’ve also promised my wife not to get a job giving bikini waxes at the Playboy mansion.

Of course Donald Fagen didn’t mention that before the 90 minutes of undersea rail time, there’d be an additional 90 minutes of groping by a TSA employee holding the same credentials as a sanitation worker and wearing the same rubber gloves they used to frisk a leper ten minutes before. Likewise, Fagen must be forgiven for incorrectly envisioning the ascendance of a kind of robot to make all the big decisions for us. After all, Al Gore only lost the election by a few votes.

You should read Greg's entire post at at Right Network.  

Greg's experiences while supporting his family in rural Maine will sound familiar to anyone living in this area, so go visit his personal blog:  Sippican Cottage. 

Chesterfields for Christmas

h/t Cold Fury