I’m back now from my family spring break trip, a trip where eight adults and six children get together somewhere warm and eat.
At what point did my vacations become an exercise in killing time between meals?
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Tag: Life
Categories
How much work is too much?
Okay, it’s official, I have too much to do at work too.
I’ve made a concerted effort to cut down on the number of projects at home, but it seems that there is a cosmic force at work with the sole desire to see me have a mental breakdown.
So, how do I deal?
Step one, find some clever quotes:
- All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
- Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)
- One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
- Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
- Edgar Bergen (1903 – 1978)
- Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.
- Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)
- I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
Step two, remember I’m going to Florida soon to sit on the beach and do nothing at all.
Bah! Whining is for four-year-olds. :p
After a week of being on my own and mildly crazy, my beautiful wife is back to keep me company. She had fun with her friends but I’m glad she’s back. Yay!
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What will they think of next?
I got a new shirt for my birthday, I know it’s a quality shirt…
it comes with an extra button hole in case I loose one.
Thank the maker there are people like MC who are willing to take a bullet for the rest of us. MC provided an excellent review of the new 7-eleven (an American convenience store) cheeseburger hot dog. Read for yourself: http://www.michaelconnolly.com/?EntryID=92
MC, you are a braver man than I…
but mmm… it sounds tasty!
From the horses mouth:
Cheeseburger Big Bite™ Hot Dog
Easy to eat perfection! It looks like a hot dog, but it tastes like a cheeseburger! Fresh from the 7-Eleven grill, beef and cheese combine to create the easy-to-eat one-third-pound Cheeseburger Big Bite Hot Dog. Add your favorite condiments or toppings! Yummy!
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It’s the simple life for me…
I’ve bit off more than I can chew… it’s now clear.
A billion hobbies, too many projects at work and half-a-dozen half-finished home-improvement tasks. It all lends to a constant feeling of “crap, what didn’t I do?”
It’s time for a project diet… but how? It all has to get done. Or does it? I think it’s time to make a list of what’s important. If it ends up on the bottom of the list, I’ll find a way to get rid of it.
Sure, not exciting to you, but heck, if something doesn’t go, how will I have time to post to my blog?
Been a little overwhelmed at work but I’m digging out. Let me just say that mail order prescriptions is a really *^&!y idea. My life has been screwed up for three weeks because of those idiots.
How to blow off some steam? Penguin baseball.
- http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~hopha/penguin.swf
- http://home.tele2.fr/kcv/pinguin.swf
- http://www.casper.ru/temp/pingu3/?namn=422
Why three links? I dunno. You can hit the penguins farther with the last one though, so that must be worth something. DeEtte got 1200.2!
Categories
We are animals…
We must never forget we are animals, barely restrained by the society we live in. When our society turns a blind eye, the animal breaks loose.
Without Sanctuary is a collection of photo postcards taken at lynchings (hangings) in America’s not-too-distant past. This book is a grim, and often gruesome reminder of the beast that lurks just below the surface of mankind.
I encourage you to visit the Without Sanctuary page at Musarium to watch the flash presentation of some of the book, narrated by the book’s author. Be advised that many of the images are graphic and disturbing.
I’d like to thank Steve for providing this link to a disturbing part of American history, a part that should never be forgotten.
Categories
How not to support your customers
I’m trying to buy something from Amazon but my account has been broken since Thursday. Any time I try to submit my order Amazon just responds with:
We’re sorry!
An error occurred when we tried to process your request. Rest assured, we’re working to resolve the problem as soon as possible. If you were trying to make a purchase, please check Your Account to confirm that the order was placed. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Being a reasonable geek and a person in the Internet industry I expect this kind of thing will happen. So, I decide to wait and try later. Yep, it didn’t work later either.
Since their online help didn’t solve my problem I decided to ask them for help. Amazon has one method to ask for help: an online form. I don’t mind filling out a form. There’s just one problem… the form doesn’t work. I tried from work on my desktop machine. I tried from work on my laptop. I tried from home on my laptop. I tried from home on my home desktop. I tried clearing my cache. I tried deleting cookies.
My account is broken. I am unable to submit the support form. I’m unable to get in touch with Amazon, right? We’ll see. As a last resort I sent mail to every single Amazon.com address I was able to find on their website (everything from press addresses to their recruiting addresses). Hopefully someone will reply.
Here’s my advice to Amazon and everyone else who has customers: Think about it – what happens to your customers if they can’t get a hold of you? I’ll tell you, they get pissed off and they go away.
If it weren’t for the $50 gift certificate Amazon is holding hostage I’d write them off and take my business to Barnes and Noble.
Blogging seems to be seeping deeper and deeper into our culture. Aditya posted a link to a great NYT article on blogging.
Here’s the quote that got me thinking:
And while there are exceptions, many journal writers exhibit a surprising lack of curiosity about the journals of true strangers. They’re too busy writing posts to browse.
Blogging is really very self-serving (except in my case, because I’m special). People have a strong need for validation, they want to know they are liked, respected, feared, or whatever resonates best with their psyche. When you think of blogging as simply people looking for acceptance, is there any surprise that high school kids gravitate to it?
No, I don’t think it’s wrong to seek validation, I think it’s natural. I wish more people recognized the want for validation as a basic human need. You want to experiment with validation?
Fun with validation:
People will be giving you information all day long, it’s unavoidable. Next time you get information from someone you have two choices. You can say either:
a. “Yeah, I knew that”
or
b. “Cool!”
Try it out, watch their face. So, what did you learn?
Choosing option “a” is really an attempt to usurp validation from the other person. Sure, you’ve made it clear you already have the information, have you made them respect you? If you short circuit their request for validation they are not going to be happy, in fact, they will be so distracted by you being a “know-it-all” that you will not get any benefit. With choice “a” you both loose.
Choose “b” and you you’ll get a much better response from the other person. Will they think less of you? Unlikely. Will you feel worse? You already know you knew the information, who cares if the other person knows you knew? Get over yourself.
Validation isn’t limited to sharing knowledge, it covers every aspect of the way people communicate. When someone shows you their new camera they really don’t want to know it was the wrong purchase, they want to hear “cool!” There’s no point in telling them they paid too much, who wins?
Okay Reeves, this sounds very touchy-feely… what’s in it for me? Validation, of course. If people feel validated when they talk to you, they will like you. People who like you will do stuff for you. Pretty simple, huh?
Now go tell all your friends to read my blog because I’m really really cool and I know stuff.