While I thought momentarily about pairing it with my VX-6000 and some .NET webcam stuff to make a remote sentry gun for my office, I quickly had a better - perhaps more artsy - idea.
I quickly scribbled the following on my board:
ShootAtCharles.com
Exactly - a web-powered shooting gallery that's got a camera pointed at me, and all the viewers can click to aim the USB missile launcher and shoot it at me from the comfort of their own basement. Or their mom's basement.
I don't know why I thought of it, or what purpose I hoped to serve, other than to continue to feed my mammoth ego.
But sure enough, there I was, hand over my wallet with the Sergio Leone thing going and about to drill a hole right through the Intarwebs to get my slot in the WHOIS when
Everybody's heard about Joya Williams, the 42 year-old former secretary to Coca-Cola's global brand director, and her conviction and sentencing.
The short story is, she conspired to sell some of Coca-Cola's trade secrets - apparently, information on as-yet unreleased products - to rival Pepsi. Industrial espionage, some backstabbin', the stuff that John Grisham novels are made of, right?
And, apparently, it was a hell of a blow, because the judge in this case thought the dirty deeds done here were worth overriding both prosecutor's sentencing recommendations and federal sentencing guidelines to put Joya away for eight years - 18 months longer than the maximum federal recommendation.
Sez the judge:
"This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society...the guidelines as they are written don’t begin to approach the seriousness of this case..."
And so I think - well, she must have gotten away with a hell of a bounty. Then I see the number.
Joya's price on the secrets: $1.5 million.
That's it? That's all?
Cracking Open The Files
Somethin' ain't right, but to know what ain't right and how right it ain't, I need data.
I take a look at the numbers we're talking about. Just a quick pull-off of the '06 10-K's filed by both companies: Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Part II, Item 6.
Operating Revenues for 2006 For Coca-Cola: $24.08 billion. Operating Revenues for 2006 For Pepsi: $12.73 billion. The Price Joya was Selling Her Secrets At: $1.5 million.
What the hell?
Doing The Math
Let's say that this secret product, the one that Joya wanted to sell, could tip the balance of revenue just one percent from Coke to Pepsi.
Just one percent.
We're talking about an operating revenue drop for Coca-Cola of $240 million dollars.
For her secrets package, she bid out only one-half of one percent of that number. Talk about lowballing the goods - what the heck happened here?
There's a clue in relativity - and pay scales.
It's All Relative
How much did Joya make as secretary? According to PayScale.com, Executive Secretaries like her make $40,000...if they have 20 years of experience. Even if they paid her 20% above the median, she'd still only be taking home $48K.
At that salary, looking at a figure of $1.5 million would be irresistable.
But just to drive it home, remember Pfizer's CEO - Hank McKinnell? No? Well, he's the guy that got $200 million in compensation for stepping down as CEO of the company in December of 2006.
Yeah. He got $200 million dollars for being fired.
The office where secretaries work for peanuts while their bosses clean up massive golden parachute packages are natural places for this kind of compensation tension to reach a snapping point, as was the case with Joya and Coca-Cola.
A Smell Worse Than Greed But it's not just that this was a case of honest-to-God Price-Is-Right underbidding, but the worst part is that Pepsi didn't bite. The secrets sale fell through.
Let's recap.
Joya Williams arrested for conspiracy to sell secrets.
Sale of secrets never actually completed.
Sale would have been for cash value of only one-half of one-one-hundredth of Coca-Cola's operating revenues for one year.
Judge decides that this crime is so heinous and damaging, overrides federal sentencing guidelines and marches Joya off to jail for eight years.
My read: This absolutely stinks. This isn't justice - this is a message.
My advice to future corporate spies: Read a 10-K before bidding. And maybe watch Boiler Room.
That's the third time I've asked myself that question - third bump I've hit, third time my heart's nearly stopped dead at the thought of spilling this stupid canister out the back of this Home Depot rental truck.
"We can't put that in a car", he says.
Everything was going perfect - give him a Visa card, tell him I don't mind the $500 deposit, I survive the blue-collar terrorist-check staredown, and control the conversation. He didn't ask why I wanted it. He didn't ask. I don't have to tell him.
I don't have to tell him that I need ten liters of liquid nitrogen because I'm making ice cream.
Because if he ever knew that was the real reason I walked into a professional welding gas supply company, pulled right up like I knew what I was doing, and asked for liquid nitrogen - supercooled, life-threatening, maddeningly dangerous gas, he'd laugh at me until I shriveled up and died.
And he probably wouldn't give me the liquid nitrogen, either.
Liquid Nitrogen? Yeah, nitrogen. Cooled down to -320 degrees fahrenheit, it becomes a liquid, and subsequently the stuff of scientific legend. You can do anything with liquid nitrogen. It shatters flowers like glass. It beads up and skids along the floor endlessly like little hovercrafts. It makes huge clouds of Ridley Scott fog. It scares people if you drop it near their feet. If you have a lot of it, you can shatter Jason Patrick into a thousand pieces (but that's been done before).
It even makes ice cream. In five minutes of pouring and stirring, some milk, eggs, sugar, and salt becomes a gallon and a half of ice cream. Ice cream in three-hundred seconds.
And once you've seen it done, you have to do it yourself. Nobody can stop you, nobody will ever convince you that it's dumb, dangerous, or petty.
You just get the liquid nitrogen and all the ingredients and you don't tell anyone why, especially not the guy at the company that sells you the nitrogen. You don't tell him. You just let him load the dewar - that's what they call the canister - on a little hand truck, and bring it outside.
But then he carts it outside, sees the car, smirks, and pops the policy pill. Can't put it in a car.
"If ya get into an accident", he says, "It'll spill all over you, and -"
And he doesn't finish his sentence because life gets kind of random in a closed vehicle with ten liters of spilled supercooled gas all over you, bleeding into your lungs and skin and expanding to about 7,000 liters of gas in a 3,000 liter cabin.
You could go all sorts of directions with an "and" when you're suffocating and frozen and parts are blue and falling off like a leperous smurf and -
He just doesn't go there. He just stops at "and". And then he turns the little hand truck around and the liquid nitrogen - my liquid nitrogen - was gone.
Well. Time to go to Plan B.
B is For Bad Idea Need a truck. Where do I get a truck?
"One hour," I tell him, real slick-like.
I'm filling out forms and talking tie-downs at the Home Depot. Someone's trying to fix a diamond-carbide-tipped whatchamacalit and I realize I'm really bad at this "doing things that involve things" thing. I don't even know how to use these stupid ratchet tie-downs they give me, but they trust that beautiful gold Visa card and dangle a key ring in front of me.
The truck is orange, slapped with blatant Home Depot logos on every available square inch, and there's no way to hide what I am - a guy without his own truck, without any legitimate reason to have liquid nitrogen, and no idea what he's doing.
Screw it, I already paid the money. Let's go get my nitrogen.
Half an hour later, I'm back at the gas company and my dewar is tied down in the back of my rental truck. Nobody says a word about the truck. They just hand off the gas and get far away from me. I ratchet, tie, and twist, and eventually, I think I have it.
I tense the dewar, push it, try to see if it'll fall over when I'm driving, and spill minus-three-hundred-degree liquid nitrogen all over the back of the truck, the road, other cars - I see the truck cracking in half, I see windshields shattering, cars skidding on newly-iced pavement, somehow ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, wondering what the repair bill on that would look like...
No More And Then
Alright, so the short story is, I made it home, and whipped up a tasty batch of ice cream for my friends at this year's Cinco De Mayo party. You want to see the video? It's fun and instructional, too!
