Conference 7.286::digital

    Nit alert!
    
    I believe the quote is "We trained hard ...", not "strained".
    But the sense is about the same either way.
    
    The first time I saw it was in 1968 posted outside Win Hindle's office
    door while we were in the middle of a Large Computer Engineering (aka
    36-bit engineering) reorganization.

    If my memory is correct, when I saw the quote there was an adendum
    which explained that Petronius was ordered to comit sucicide !
    
    

I don't know who wrote that, but I will bet five American dollars it can't be
found anywhere in Petronius.

And what's the sense of it?  That you should meet new situations and NOT react
to them?

    
    I think a look into the near future is interesting...  
    
    Last year (June 1991) DEC took a 1.2 Billion restructuring charge.
    To date it's my understanding (don't have the facts) that app.
    only 50% of the fund have been used.   There is a rumor that DEC
    manufacturing may go from 26 plants world wide to 12.  If any further
    cuts are planned, including those previously announced they will
    require some funding in the Fy93+ timeframe.
    
    Messages to Wall street,
    
    a) 1.2 Billion taken but not fully used?
    
    b) Additional funding required in FY93?
    
    c) Possible additional funding required after FY93?
    
    If these messages come true, what does that say to wall street?
    
    
    Tom

    .4
    
    
    	Seems to me that instead of meeting the new problems, DEC
    	will reorg, and try to "magic" the problem away.
    
    	Point here, why is it that we have over 3000 TRAINED
    	TROUBLESHOOTERS in the CSC's and managment has not seen fit
    	to use this resource to help define and fix the org
    	problem????? 
    
    
    	rth

    re: .3
    
    You're right.  It's a great quote, and I don't know who wrote it, but
    it is not by the 1st century AD Roman known as Petronius Arbiter.
    
    
    Elliott

re .0

Petronius snuffed it around 66 AD, so (pick one or more)

1.  He lived to be at least 276 years old
2.  The piece wasn't written in 210 BC
3.  It wasn't written by Petronius

    When I saw the quote it was in the third stall on the right and
    strained was correct.

    Actually, I don't think the quote appeared anywhere until the invention
    of the office copier.  .0 is the only time that I have seen it in a
    medium other than a fuzzy fifth or sixth generation Xerox copy.
    
    Larry

    
    FWIW --
    
    	Petronius wrote "The Satyricon."  Apuleius wrote "The
    	Golden Ass."

    From "The Great Thoughts" by George Seldes:

    "PETRONIUS (called Arbiter)
    (suicide, c.66 A.D.)
    Roman writer


    The Satyricon

    One man will tell you one rule of life, and another'll tell you
    another.  But *I* say, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and so you see I'm
    bursting with wealth.


    Fragments

    	Fear first in the world created the gods.  Fragment 27

    	A wife is a burden imposed by law.  Fragment 78

    	The pleasure of the act of love is gross and brief and brings
    	loathing after it.  Fragment 101"

    ----------------------------------
    Well, his investment advice is sound - buy cheap and sell dear.  Can't
    say as I think much about the rest of it.  As to the validity of the
    quote on .0, all I can say is that is as I found it in the CONSULTANTS
    conference.  Perhaps we have an urban legend after all.

    But I still was struck by the appropriateness of the quote.

    Steve

    Well, I need to figure out where I got it.  It isn't #30.0 in
    CONSULTANTS after all.  I must have misread either the number or the
    conference when I cut/paste it for .0.  If I find the source, which
    presumably has more info on the source of the quote, I'll post it.

    The quote came from the HUMAN_SYSTEMS conference.
    
    Also, the individual who posted it insists that it _is_ "strained", not
    "trained".
    
    Nuff nits.

Most interesting -

This quote (slight changes in wording) is in 'Project Management, As If People
Mattered' by Robert J. Graham, C. 1989, Primavera Press.

He uses it to introduce chapter 8, Matrix Organization.


I checked Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, it is not in there.

Richard.

    As I said in .1, it dates back to at least 1968 inside Digital.

re:  .12 

I would guess that Tom (in .3) knows that Petronius didn't write "The
Golden Ass" (more accurately called "Metamorphosis" I believe) -- he
was just making a classical ha-ha by putting 'Golden Ass' and 'Management'
in the title.


re: .7

As to Petronius:  The last time I saw the .0 "quote" somewhere I thought to
myself:  "Self, you've always intended to read The Satyricon, why don't you
do it."  So I got the Loeb edition of the works of Petronius out of the library
and read The Satyricon -- plus the collected fragments.  The passage in .0 was 
not there in any way, shape, or form.  So, barring some enormous oversight, or
the discovery since the publication of that book of some previously unknown
words of Petronius, it ain't by him.

Elliott

    And this reminds me of the story of the three envelopes........
    
    
    If you haven't heard it......the new employee started the new job,
    opened the new desk and discovered three envelopes left by the
    predecessor with a note which read; if you get into trouble on this
    job, open the first envelope.  If trouble happens again, open the
    second envelope, and if again the third.
    
    After three times in trouble, notes had been read which said:
    
       1 - Blame your predecessor
       2 - Reorganize
       3 - Make out three envelopes!
    
    

Is it possible that the quotation derives from Bulwer-Lytton's "The Last
Days of Pompeii" which, I believe, includes Petronius as a major character?

-dave

    
    RE: -.1
    Perhaps you're thinking of Sienkiewicz's "Quo Vadis."
    
    RE: Several back
    
    Actually, "Metamorphoses" is a work by Ovid, I believe, not Apuleius.
    
    	

"Quo Vadis" it is (says he, scraping egg from face) ;^(

-dave

No, Metamorphosis is a work by Franz Kafka. It is strangely appropriate
for the New Digital.

Martin.

The Oxford Clasical Dictionary (2nd edition, 1970), under the entry
APULEIUS:

"The _Metamorphoses_ (better known as 'The Golden Ass') is the
sole Latin novel that survives entire.  A delightful work ... it
tells the adventures of one Lucius who, being too curious concerning 
the black art, is accidentally turned into an ass ... ."

And, yes, Ovid also composed a work entitled _Metamorphoses_ in which
many people get changed into many things.

Elliott

    re .24 et al
    
    I think there are a lot of parallels between Kafka's works and life in
    Digital at present.
    
    gary