Paul Otellini is such a dipshit

Have you ever heard of quantum computing? I won’t get into the details here, as it’s pretty freakin' complicated (besides, White Ghost or Sierra would do a better job explaining that shit). Anyway, it’s one of those Holy Grails of computer architecture. You know, make shit all super-fast, keep us on the ol’ Moore’s Law curve and all. Any computer architecture college or processor manufacturer worth their salt has got some white-beard working on the problem in a dank basement somewhere. Most of them aren’t getting anywhere though… Most of them that is, except for our very own White Ghost, and a certain Marcus Felders, formerly of employ at Intel Corp.

As some back-story, I took White Ghost out of the office in the spring of 2001 for a mission. I know, that’s not code, but the mission was cake. A certain Commander in Chief’s daughter was bound to get preggers in Cabo, and all we had to do was slip her some RU486 to counteract the vast amounts of alcohol, roofies, and semen (probably in that order) that would be circulating through her system by the end of the weekend.

So it’s me and the Ghost sitting at this beachside bar doing tequila shooters on the expense tab, and we start buying drinks for all the girls. And we’re getting loud and going nuts, and Ghost all of a sudden jumps up on the bar and shouts, “Who wants to do body shots?!? Whooo!!!”

So then all of a sudden we’ve got like twenty beautiful babies all crowding up to the bar, and Ghost’s eyes are all wide, because he’d never been down to Mexico for Spring Break, and he doesn’t have the cool head of an ops guy, you know. So I just use my skills and quickly scan the crowd and pick out this honey that I just know is Ghost’s type.

So I call this girl out and everybody’s looking kinda sore, but the crowd parts and she comes up, and Ghost is wigging, and when she gets there she hops on the bar, whips off her bikini top and flops down.

Now, I thought ol’ White Ghost was going to have a heart attack at this point. In fact, I think he did, but I used my advanced field first aid training and gave him a quick bop on the sternum, and he kinda took a step back, got his color again, and then this big smile comes across his face.

So I know we’re losing time, so I grab the salt, pour it on her chest, give a generous helping of the Patron, and then like a pro Ghost is down to do the shot, and as he comes up I jabbed a lime wedge in his mouth. No sooner is it in, though, he spits it out and shouts, “I’VE GOT IT!!! I’VE FUCKIN’ GOT IT!!!” And like a flash he’s out of the bar dashing down the beach to the hotel, leaving me to close down the place myself… Which I was obliged to do.

Anyway, turns out that at that peak of our debauchery, White Ghost realized the secret to quantum computing, and within a week of getting back we had the most kick ass computer on the planet crunching Interpol files, sorting DNA samples, and helping us to whip some serious butt at World of Warcraft. The secret existence of quantum computing has been our organization’s little ace in the hole over the past few years, you could say.

Now into the fray enters Marcus Felders at Intel. Not even at those companies do they take these quantum computing researchers seriously, and when Felders started talking about his discoveries, nobody, even at Intel, was listening…except for our operatives inside.

We knew that we needed to get rid of this guy, or at least get him out of there. Anybody finding the answer to this problem would be a complete fluke, and it could be fifty years before the right blend of brains, booze, and raw animal magnetism came together again to solve the problem. But how to get him out? Even a hatchet man like Otellini knows that it’s worth keeping around at least a few of your top employees. And so a scheme was hatched…

A few months ago Zulu Echo and I waltzed into the Intel HQ in Santa Clara and introduced ourselves as consultants from McKinsey & Company on assignment to look over the books. Turns out that they’re such a big company they didn’t even check to make sure we were supposed be there. So we spent a week and a half picking badge numbers at random and putting together a report about how they need to make cuts in order to stay competitive with AMD.

The report was really the key. We wanted Otellini to read the executive summary with all the neat McKinsey buzzwords, get the picture, and then not want to pour through the rest of the expansive report. So we put all of our time into the first few pages and the last few pages, and then copied the text of Ulysses off the Internet, put it in 6 point font, and filled that in for the middle. We made it very clear that there was a key group of cuts that needed to be made immediately (a core group of competent managers who might actually read the report), and then rounds and rounds of cuts to follow. We needed a very large number of total cuts, otherwise Otellini wouldn't think this shit was serious. Also, if the number was too small, it might be drawn to his attention that Felders, one of his most brilliant employees, was being targeted for dismissal. After some debate, we settled on the absurd number of 10,000 people.

We weren’t really sure that the scheme would work. But when we just showed up at Paul’s office, report in hand, and told him we were from McKinsey, he got this look on his face like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny had showed up on his doorstep with a big sack full of toys and candy. So we took him through the plan, he shook our hands, and said he’d been looking for something to do to feel useful, and that he’d get right to work.

Two months later, and right on the schedule called out in the report, a bewildered Marcus Felders wandered out of his basement office, pink slip in hand. We had a black van waiting on the street. It zipped up, a couple of agents pulled a gunnysack over his head, and we drove him away.

He’s been working for us ever since, and says it’s the best career move he could have made. Apparently he’d felt for a while that Intel was going down the shitter.