Minibar Madness

From: spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 12:42 AM
To: eWEEK readers
Subject: Conspicuous Cron-ic consumption; MSG purveyors

In the Big Apple for vendor meetings, Spence sat in his hotel room and stared at the minibar key on the table in front of him. With the bean counters still biting every nickel the way some Olympic athletes bite their medals, the Katt knew, alas, that his T&E budget couldnt handle $5 bags of smoke-flavored almonds and $7 nips of Tanqueray. Suddenly, the Beatles “You Never Give Me Your Money,” the KattPhones new ring tone, broke the Furballs fixation on the fridge.

The caller was a crony telling Spence to check his e-mail for financial statements from Computer Associates 10-K filing with the SEC. “Wow, Ken Crons compensation as interim CEO consists of a base salary of $50,000 per month, a grant of 52,780 restricted stock units and options to purchase 83,845 shares of common stock,” gushed the Grimalkin. “Id be an interim Porta-John attendant for $50,000 a month!” The crony also said Cron was eligible for an annual performance bonus of $750,000 and an equity-based performance bonus (payable in stock options and/or restricted stock) with a target of $2.25 million. The filing also stated that the company has deferred consideration of severance payments to former CA head honcho Sanjay Kumar until the government investigation of the celebrated Mr. K. is done. “But he does get some lovely interim parting gifts,” noted the Tabby. “Home security services, off-premises office space, one assistant, telephone and network connections, and medical insurance for him and his family for up to 20 years.”

The Kitty bid his pal adieu, no longer able to resist the siren song of the minibar, which suddenly seemed to be floating around the room like the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Prying open Pandoras pantry to inhale Coors Light and granola bars, the two-fisted Tabbys T&E was saved by a knock at the door.

It was a pal who claimed that EMC will be plugging into iSCSI technology more than it previously announced and is hungry to take a bigger bite out of the network appliance market.

Noting the famished Furballs food funk, the pal dragged the gorging Grimalkin out of his room for dinner and to check out the pre-GOP convention scene at Madison Square Garden. There, a Xerox security guy told the duo the Grand Old Party will be using twice as much Xerox printing equipment as the DNC used. “Id have thought politicians would need more shredders than printers,” cackled the Kitty. “Nextel, the official wireless service provider for the DNC, is the official provider for the Republican gathering, too,” said the pal. “Good lord—if Pat Buchanan hears this, hell be convinced theres no difference between the parties,” purred the politic Puss.