Now we can play, too

February 24, 2010 under curios

I got my first email from an MLA the other day.

I didn’t recognize it in the inbox, but when I clicked on it I saw that it was a form response to a petition that I had supported.

I say ‘supported’ because, well… I never actually signed anything. The whole thing went like this:

  • Friend posts good cause link on Facebook
  • I follow good cause link to good cause site
  • Prewritten form e-mail is there on site
  • I customize form e-mail with my own two paragraphs
  • I click send
  • Time passes
  • E-mail from MLA appears in my inbox

Hmm… seems kind of mundane. I admit, there’s nothing special about receiving a form letter from an MLA. But it seems a little special that I got to send one. I’ve never sent a form letter before, even if I just sent one copy of it.

I guess what gets me a little excited about this boring story is that it’s a real life story of new tools at work – new tools of communication and organization. The playing field of who can say what to whom is changing.

The playing field of who will listen to what from whom will probably stay forever unchanged, though.

Or maybe I’m just cynical.

comments: 3 »

Errorgance

February 23, 2010 under curios

The only thing more painful than a jerk is an incompetent jerk.

comments: 2 »

Musings on Sport

February 22, 2010 under Uncategorized

Right now the Olympics are going on, and if I have to say one thing about the Olympics, it is that they are old. We’ve been mucking with sport for a long time. What I don’t get is, “Why?”

I think there’s probably a couple posts worth on this topic, but I’ll start out with an unsupported premise, and a story.

The premise – Sport is an exercise in glory and power. It is a manufactured conflict that reveals a glorious or a powerful aspect. Resolution, strength, courage…

The story:

My favorite sports moment is when I was playing volleyball at a picnic. The net was one of those inexpensive portable kits you set up – the kind that rely on tension to stay upright, with the little nylon cords for guy wires. I actually have two great memories from that game. The first is when I slipped trying to dig a ball, but with my second effort I was inches away from making the play nonetheless.

But the second was far better. Only a handful of people ever saw it. I’m certainly the only one who thinks about it or remembers it. But I remember it clearly.

An errant return from my team was headed out of bounds – sideways, out of our court, and I was determined to save the play. I was scrambling low on slick grass footing- stumbling and staggering off balance, but churning my legs as fast as I could to try and make the distance.

I saw the guy wire at the last possible second. It was inevitable – I was going to tumble into it and take down the entire volleyball set.

I don’t know how to describe what happened, except that it was unlike anything I’ve done before or since. I planted my left foot, letting my momentum carry me forward, falling forward over it.  Then I pushed off and launched myself in a little backroll over the silly little nylon cord. I think it was like what a bowling ball would do if you put a penny on the lane – the ball barreling down,  hitting the bump, and doing a little hop – a jump spinning forward in the air before crashing back down and carrying on through.

I carried my little hop on through into the grass and rolled a couple times.

To the picnic observers there can’t have been much glory on display that day, but for me there was. It felt glorious – I felt alive! It was about as small  a platform for glory as there could have been, but in middle of all the adrenaline and the endorphins and such, I was living in the manner for which I was made.

It was a good moment.

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Complaining about broken software

February 19, 2010 under technical

This is an angry post.

Recently Facebook “updated” its interface. I noticed no great improvement, but the bugs really riled me. Try to write a comment… doesn’t work. Okay then.

When I logged in to my yahoo mail, there was a little box asking me, “What are you doing right now?”

Do you remember back when e-mail was just e-mail and your webmail provider was happy just to show you ads and track your browsing with cookies? When it didn’t feel the need to pry into your current goings on? Why does my webmail care what I’m doing right now?!?

I’m trying to check my e-mail. Grrr.

Oh look… In my inbox is an e-mail from Amazon telling me I can save 14%… on a book I already bought through them. In case… I want a second copy? If you’re going to run a smart recommendation system, at least make it smart.

Google Buzz is already getting deserved flak for:

  1. Auto-populating your followers lists with the people you email the most
  2. Making that list public by default.

Honestly, who thought it was a good idea to DISCLOSE TO THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD THE LIST OF WHO YOU TALK TO MOST WITHOUT EVER ASKING YOU???

When all you ever wanted from Google’s webmail service was, umm.. WEBMAIL!!!

Whatever happened to not bait and switching your clients?

I get that these are all free services. I get that they owe me nothing. But all I see right now is a bunch of big companies who see me as a tiny little chip in their battle to exert their control over the web. I get that everything they’re doing is probably allowed by the Terms of Service that I agreed to without reading carefully.

I get that I’m just angry and cantankerous because of other things and that they’re just receiving the brunt of it.

But they’re still abusing me. With broken software. And it hurts.

Pain, ladies and gentleman. Web 2.0 pain.

But it’s still better than AOL.

Oh, AOL. All of the sleaze, but none of the rounded corners and unoffensive light blue color schemes. A walled garden community where customers were a valuable resource to be exploited.

You were truly visionary, but you were 15 years ahead of your time.

Thank God for Lent. I’m not sure how I’d survive computers, otherwise.

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It was only a matter of time

February 18, 2010 under technical

…before someone did this:

Please rob me searches twitter for tweets that indicate someone is not at home.

It’s made the news; a lot of the news. You’ve probably already read about it before you read this post. My first thought is, “Darn, I should have done this.” Hopefully it raises public awareness.

This is only one piece of the puzzle needed to rob someone, but it’s not hard to imagine the other pieces coming together in a socially networked world. Why not buzz over to their twitter profile page and grab their real name?

Hmm… could you automatically look them up in an online phone directory if you know what city they’re in?

If you are able to link a twitter account with a Facebook account, things get a whole lot easier.

You want to know if their family (friends with same last name?) are away. Do they have anyone coming to house-sit?

Oh, and forget burglars… they’re just one on a long list of people who might be interested to know this stuff.

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This is a post

February 16, 2010 under Uncategorized

I feel bad that there aren’t very many new posts, so…

Here everyone is!

I’m almost finished my Time Management analysis, so I think I’ll do a final wrap up (while leaving things open to possible future musings).

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, so that means I should finish off the 396 Word Bible (my previous Lenten project) and introduce my new one this year.

Wish me luck!
Watch this space!

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WOTD – Portentous

February 10, 2010 under Uncategorized

A dump from my cubicle’s white-plank.

Portentous

comes from – ‘portend’.

‘por’ – a variation on the prefix ‘pro’, meaning ‘go forward’. Think ‘protrude, protract’ vs ‘extrude, retract,extract’

‘tend’ – from ‘tendere’, meaning to stretch or reach. Think ‘extend‘.

Therefore – Portentous – forward stretching, or foretelling. Reaching beyond the present.

Completely unrelated to:

‘important’

Once you dig that the ‘por’ in portentous is a corrupted prefix, there’s no reason to confuse it with ‘important’. Also ‘important’ has that troublesome ‘a’ in ‘ant’ which really messes up your ‘portent’.

Important, of course means something of import, coming from the shipping term, meaning ‘bringing in’. There’s a n implicit gateway, opening or a door – a portal. French – ouvrez la porte, s’il vous plait.

Bonus words:

‘intent’ – stretch towards

‘retention’ – UNRELATED! comes from ‘tenere’, to hold.

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Timey Time Time

February 9, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

Wherefore art thou, Time?

A little classic literature today. Aren’t we all looking out the balcony longing for a little more time? But Romeo and Juliet is just so… sappy idealized. I like the practicality of Mr. Micawber.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” — Mr Micawber (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)

Does this work for time? I think it does – in two ways.

The first way is punctuality. This is a bold statement, coming as it does from a procrastinator.

It’s not fun living a perpetual five minutes (or 10, or 15) behind the times. Eternally chasing deadlines is a sucker’s game. So why am I so good at it?

I have a funny relationship with procrastination.

  • On the one hand, looking at the hard evidence, we are on the best of terms. We spend lots of time together. The love is flowing.
  • On the other hand, I can’t think of another thing off-hand that has caused me so much unhappiness for so little reward.

There’s an outrageous disconnect here.

The second way the rule applies is with regards to volume. What happens when you try to fit 800 blocks of time in a 672 block schedule?

673 blocks? 671 blocks?

I tend to get frustrated when I can’t do things that I want to do. At the same time, I have a great quantity of things that I want to do, but I never seem to have the time. I also, looking at the evidence, have a number of things that I currently do which hog the slots.

Video games, for example, have a terrible time/value trade-off. Dragon Age is the first video game I’ve played in a long time, and while it is a fantastic game, it’s a time eater. It’s impossible to play in small doses – it’s the book equivalent of a page turner.

Which is great, except for the whole “other things I want to do” and “limited time slot” problems.

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Sunday log is done and dusted

February 8, 2010 under Uncategorized

And visible here.

Confession time – it’s really bad. The afternoon suffered greatly from my Saturday syndrome. When I’m mucking about I’m not as task oriented and I don’t keep as detailed track in my notebook. Then when I look over my time log it’s sketchy. The blocks of time are, I think, pretty accurate, but they weren’t all written down.

The one thing that time logging doesn’t measure well is quality. There’s a lot of work going on in the Sunday log, but it’s not all high quality work. The fact is,  I ran films continuously in the background. This is handy for films with a lot of dead time – you can tune in just for the good bits, and then get back to work when the film slows down.

But it does decrease the quality of the work experience.

If it wasn’t 3:30 in the morning I’d give some analysis.

I guess the immediate lesson is that tracking time doesn’t automatically help me manage it.

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Saturday Log is Up

February 7, 2010 under Uncategorized

All week I was somewhat worried about my Saturday. Would I have the strength of character to do what I usually do – to waste the copious amounts of time I usually waste?

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.

My day was pretty much the usual Saturday, with some intervention of work. I was also really bad at logging today, because I got distracted by long periods of spending time on the internet. So while the times are pretty accurate, the specificity is lacking.

For example,  I know my mother called while I was working, but I can’t for the life of me remember when.

Good comments on Friday’s post, by the way. Y’all done good, folks!

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