Self Loathing in Minneapolis

One day you wake up and you are this fat, middle-aged, balding piece of work. Lucky I can change most of those things or at least start on them….right after this happy hour and nap.

Socially Awkward

In some sense I feel like I have digressed in my professional social ability severely. For the last two years at my previous job I was basically isolated from most human contact I was literally the only person on an entire side of an office building with my only real interaction coming in the form of conference calls and WebEx sessions. This had its pluses like sweat pants everyday and come and go flexibility, but the profession etiquette muscles seemed to have fatigued considerably.

With my basic interaction with adults reduced to Sunday fun days, pub crawls, sports games, kickball, and other events where a mere series of grunts was understood by all I admit I am getting quite the workout back in a truly professional environment and it is exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time.

Goals

All of my 2010 goals are done. And it is only October. It is amazing what you can knock off the list when you have a month off from work. Guess it is time to start planning for next year.

Makeshift Memorial Spots

On my dog walking rounds there is this tree, sadly it was the last thing that three young people saw before their lives ended in a car crash at its base. This incident happened quite some time ago but several times through-out the year the tree will get decorated with signs like, “Happy Birthday, We miss you” or gifts left at its base or the occasional candle.

I know we do this because death is such a defining event and it is very specific. I just think it pays homage to all of the wrong things. I started to wonder why don’t we honor someone life after their death by celebrating their life rather then the termination of it?

Why don’t we put flowers and signs at the place their life began?

Promise me no matter how it ends from me there will be no marker for that event, no make shift memorial. That place is insignificant it does not matte,r the times had together are what counts. Now I am off cause I am starting to even depress myself.. Cheers

Perpetual Motion or Indecision Machine

If you drop a cat it will land on its feet. If you drop a piece of buttered toast it will land buttered side down. If you tie the toast to the cats back and drop it will spin in place forever without hitting the ground. (I think GM is currently exploring this option for its new line of green engines)

Sometimes you come across this dilemma in business situations where you have two forces of nature that are working to repel each other. In some companies this can be the sales division verse the risk division or the marketing division vs the IS department with each side only converging or seeing their given point of view. I find it troubling (although lucrative) that there is so few people who are really good generalists when it comes to business.

Every once in a while I am amazed that someone actually pays me to understand both sides of a business decision and help facilitate the outcome or as I have come to calling it cutting the toast. Not to be confused with cutting the wind which coincidentally is also something analysts are pretty good at.

Accelerating Benchmarks

I tend to come from the view that static benchmarks are extremely dangerous for a company. They create a sense of false security because companies generally hit them in silos without relation to any outside force. Any benchmark that isn’t updated at the very least annually is probably not telling you anything useful.

Side Bar

Maybe I will open a saloon up called Side Bar where everyone lays down on mats and drinks through straws. Decorated with a nod to the Roman era dinner party. The bar would be sunk in the floor in the middle. I don’t know just an idea.

Design Wonderment

How do blind people know where the dryers\hand towels are in a bathroom? There seems to be considerable variation in their general placement relative to the sink (sometimes to the left of the sink sometimes to the right of the sink, sometimes by the door, sometimes on the opposite wall) I think that would be terribly frustrating.

I wonder if office buildings ever blindfold the developers or companies ever do usability testing for this. Walk through the scenario of a blind CEO coming to visit them or a blind potential sale feel the experience of their building from this point of view. I bet they would be surprised.

Super Hero’s?

While I understand the desire of people to wish themselves some extreme form of power such as the ability of flight or super human strength knowing human nature as it is I doubt that an average person suddenly endowed with these powers would use them solely for the benefit of mankind. I would be willing to venture that in a controlled experiment where you were able to grant super powers to certain individuals you would end up with a lot more villains then heroes by some exponential factor.

Retirement

I don’t know if I could ever really retire. I have had the opportunity to have quite a lot of time off and I find myself missing actually working. I should say I find myself missing the feeling of being needed of feeling like I contribute to something. Don’t get me wrong the first two weeks were great. Sleep in, do a few chores read outside, go for a walk, but then something is just missing. Maybe I do seek validation in others more then I would like to believe?

Kindle

I have finally crossed over to the e-book and to be truthful. I am loving the kindle. I thought I would miss the “feel” of books and the pages but really it was less of a factor then I thought it would be.

One thing that I noticed I love about books is that they are kind of mini projects. You can see your status progress as you burn through the pages. The status bar on the kindle covers this feature and I have found it to be just as emotionally rewarding.

The pluses of the Kindle are many great readability, even in sunlight, lower book prices on new releases, low initial start-up price and decent usability.

The one feature I wish they had was a good skip feature that would bring you directly to notes in the back of the book that correspond with a chapter. I never noticed how much I can skip around in a book until I picked this up but overall I am extremely happy convert.

Bags Fly Fee

Just saw an interesting set of commercials Sun Country bag police ad spot followed by Delta American Express where if you sign up for their card you get your luggage on for Free....

One spot checked bags are just free.

The other they are free if you sign up for a high interest rate credit card.

Just kind of highlighted the difference and I wonder how many people noticed?