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Everything is Just Fine
I once had this theory, that Time pushes us all to averages (which is a nice way to say mediocrity): rather, the passage of time in the presence of apathy smooths even the sharpest of ambition.
The rough transition between the heightened sense of awareness sculpted over a race weekend and this rude, reintegration with the auto-dulling office routine (viva! vida cubano), resolutely underscores just how far from focus my surroundings have fallen. Silently, effortlessly, I fall instep, sleepwalking the fuzzy detachment from the machinations of life.
Suddenly, it dawns on me, perhaps the surroundings are Just Fine, and it's I who've lost focus. Of course, close friends have been saying this for awhile, and I've always passively shrugged it off in agreement. But now, only now, can I feel it like sharp steel on my chest. Change must come soon.
Where are my maps, it's time for a roadtrip.
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the universal
this afternoon, a flickr friend pointed me to an interesting project wherein the 'recently uploaded' images provided to flickr are parsed for public flags and geographic meta-data, then dynamicaly mapped across the planet. really, a rather seamless integration of a few independent technology streams.
we all love a clever hack; i can honestly say that this might be my favorite discovery in a lifetime of searching for clever hacks...
i sit now, listening to 'the universal,' from a band in england. i sip coffee pressed from beans in guatemala, roasted in portland, from a cup that was made in china, captivated by a display designed in cupertino. <...> i contemplate humanity.
(yes, this sounds pompous, self absorbed--gauche even--but spend 15 minutes in this trance, and try to come up with a better description. really.)
the world spins below: somehow both wholly indifferent, yet improbably compassionate. it sends postcards. snapshots. preciously private, profoundly public. glimpses of life behind closed doors. moments that I might not share, would not know, if i lived next door. even if i was there...
maybe even if i was god.
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listening to people is easy. caring is hard.
------------8<-----------------
jack: i'm going downstairs to hit the liquor cabinent.
jack: some effen V. for my oj.
jack: brb.
jack: b.
jack: muuuuch better.
co-worker: What's V ?
jack: Vodka.
jack: Russian for "compassion"
jack: which i'm lacking, at themoment.
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chain of command
a 'big voiced' director-type just walked past my cube mid-conversation, and i couldn't help but to overhear their intent to "computerize" something. although i will readily consent this statement could have been playful slang, i am relcalcitrant (at best) to extend the benefit of doubt.
quite frankly, i'd expect this from an elderly relative; hearing it from a tech executive directly responsible for the wellbeing of my company is, well...
...words fail.
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the joys of tech support
we here at bb would quite like to congratulate today's winning entry in the ongoing—albeit unpublished—"confound your support engineer" contest.
going above and beyond the call of duty, this submission distills the very essence of this contest into two, elegantly crafted lines:
"Can SMS be used in conjunction with SMS? Citrix recommends that SMS not be loaded."
clear. concise. confounding.
how can one not help but to admire the deft artistry of this sublime adversary. that one could compile, then discount, so many classic support tenets belies true genius.
two lines: an identity riddle, a reference to a technical acronym that has no immediately obvious relation to our product, and the mention of a 3rd party company with whom we have no business affiliation.
two lines: to leave the mouth agape, and an engineer struggling for reason.
two lines: to propel this submission to the top of our 'wtf?' list.
bravo! we salute you!
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spiderwebs
the remote worker, is by defintion, remote. in radio shack terms, that's a 5' wire and a control box. bluetooth, about 8' and a nice battery charge, (assuming line of sight).
historically speaking, remote might be just across the river, or 'just through those trees, o'er there.' --considered in emotional terms of a failed relationship, remote can be an unchartable, even on an infinite plane. (e.g. my mother does not remotely understand the motives of my father)...
professionally speaking, 'remote' can simultaneously be a godsend from micromanagement, or a sentencing in perceived value.
that said, it is the dark times, those days when clouds hang in cuba and people meet in small packs, murmuring, that the remote worker truly understands remote.
passive information channels like cubespeak, breakroom banter, and bathroom stall conversations expire as conduits, leaving the remote worker seperated both physically and emotionally.
evolving, as all life must, the modern remote worker learns to become an information spider. it spins its web, carefully constructing new channels via new mediums; embracing technology to facilitate information flow that is historically benign.
in absence of the author's face, emotions are lost in email; sarcasm misinterpreted, great wit condemned as sophomoric reverie.
channels must then be constructed in complex patterns... months of observing how news migrates through these different mediums, how each snippet follows different paths, and is in turn altered by them. multiple signals allow triangulation, and with triangulation, the information spider learns to judge distance, probability, and veracity.
it becomes clear that the more exposed web you lay, the more signals you catch; a larger dataset to interpret: quantify, qualify.
i am an information spider. my web: multinational, multimedia, multilingual. it is a triumph. ceasar would shudder with envy; napolean, powerless in his lust. it is this grand, yet, it's just a shadow of it's former self.
my web: tattered, torn, improbably patched, and i, sitting quietly in the center. it's dancing today, dancing on every line, and the informationspider wonders if this new wind is strong enough to blow it all away.
close your eyes. close the conference windows, the webcams, turn down the ringer, and ignore your email.
breathe in, breathe out.
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letting you down easy
'as you are probably aware, the company is in serious financial pain right now. we need to ensure that we are able to meet our ongoing financial obligations while still providing a financial buffer for employees that are affected by our need to reduce staff. in order to meet our financial obligations, we need to reduce the amount of money that we pay out in redundancy situations... '
...you know that any week that starts with an email like this is going to be fun. really.
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look busy, they're coming
newsflash: management decides that workerbees have grown far too complacent, far too comfortable in their beige cages; elects to 'stir things up' by springing another round of surprise layoffs.
with the (relatively recent) experience of being chewed up and spit out of the life-altering redundancy machine, i feel that i've developed a unique perspective on the event. --in retrospect, i've found that it's always the sheer mystery of the process that's haunting, not the outcome.
you know it's happening. usually, you even know the number. hushed murmurs spread rumors that make even those who know, second-guess themselves. everybody makes little tallies, counting the confirmed hits, subtracting from the total, calculating the remainder: it only takes 1 to be you.
it is in the quiet, solitary moments that the possibility of 'it' really stings. stare at your monitor, stare your cube decorations, stare your damned todo list. what if it is you? chances are, you hate that job anyway.
so then you loathe yourself for hanging onto a job you loathe just so you can pay some bills that you loathe and ...
( well, you get the idea. )
trust me, if it does happen, and you are the one, a sort of improbable nirvana opens up, invites you in. it's a relief, a really; a sort of scary calm washes over you, chilling last moment's nervous sweat, and you find yourself shuddering in the cold clear unavoidable opportunity for change. blinking like an idiot.
it's kind of like a rockshow. sometimes, you know the mosh pit's coming, (metallica's playing, duh). sometimes it just happens, (two tapers start fighting for the prime spot at belle & sebastian) and soon indie kids are bleeding, a girl's lost her glasses, and some jerk's spilt beer on my adidas.
at the end of the show, a select few are dragged from the building, and those that are left find themselves wandering around in aimless circles, their ears ringing from the noise.
of course, the next morning, there is little left to document the experience, other than 20 proof tennies and sedate reports written by robots proclaiming how great the music sounded.
anyway, another round has passed; this time, i'm in the subset defined by n-k; a group casually identified as survivors. of course, such a label belies the fact that this group is precisely the same set that will be sweating again next month, when the cycle repeats.
whatever, i need a damn summatra.
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