I recently signed up for a YouTube account to upload videos – as opposed to signing up so I can argue in comment threads. Upon registration, YouTube suggested some other people to follow based on my gmail. Which is cool if it’s my bff Sarah, who’d selected on “Let others find my channel if they have my email address.” But there were way more people who’d selected this than I cared to know. I now know 1) their age, 2) their username (see my blog about usernames), 3) what they watch when they’re logged in, and 4) what they’ve said. In one case, I saw a comment one of them made on a video. And it wasn’t like “lol that kitteh was too cute!” More like his opinion was dumb. And now I know it.

Is the conviction that the leader means what he or she says. It is a belief in two old-fashioned qualities called consistency and integrity. Trust opens the door to change.

- Peter Drucker in today’s “7 Habits” Franklin-Covey organizer.

I visited Platial.com to update my map in leiu of updating my blog…I’ve missed some important blogging the past month or so. (But it’s ok, I’ve been calling my mom more to actually TELL her about my life.)

…And I discovered plaitial.com/paiges. She’s in Oregon and emo. Not me. Then it hit me: I’m on the Internet, and you and I know that. But you don’t necessarily know which Paige is me. I do, and I ignore those other ones because I like to live in a world where I am the ONLY Paige (especially with the I as in iiii.com). I am THE Paige. I’ve met two who call themselves Paige. The first one I could only muster a “Hey, you” to and the second one I ran into at the Georgetown lacrosse camp. I didn’t need to say anything to her, just check, dodge, and keep running.

I thought maybe I should use this outlet to narrow down reality of Paiges (with an I) for the folks who read this: my Internet usernames relating to my real name are UberPaige, Paige356 and sometimes pcrasmus. Nothing else. And if you know of one, let’s have an email, not a retort blog post, ‘k? The other names out there are by impostors. So there you have it.

The Zen of Sarcasm

1.  Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not
walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Don’t walk beside me either.
Just pretty much leave me alone.

2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken
fan belt and leaky tire.

3.     It’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re
going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it.

4. Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced,
you can’t be promoted.

5. Always remember that you’re unique. Just like
everyone else.

6. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

7. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try
missing a couple of car payments.

8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile
in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away
and you have their shoes.

9. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is probably
not for you.

10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach
him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day .

11.    If you lend some-one $20 and never see that
person again, it was probably a wise investment.

12. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember
anything.

13. Some days you’re the bug; some days you’re the
windshield.

14. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

15. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it
in half and put it back in your pocket.

16. A closed mouth gathers no foot.

17. Duct tape is like ‘The Force’. It has a light side
and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

18.    There are two theories to arguing with women.
Neither one works..

19.  Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when
your lips are moving .

20.  Experience is something you don’t get until just
after you need it.

21.  Never miss a good chance to shut up.

22 .  Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping
pill and a laxative on the same night.

I was riding to work yesterday when I observed a female driver, who cut right in front of a pickup truck, causing the driver to drive onto the shoulder to avoid hitting her.

This evidently angered the driver enough that he hung his arm out his window and gave the woman the finger.

‘Man, that guy is stupid,’ I thought to myself.  I ALWAYS smile nicely and wave in a sheepish manner whenever a female does anything to me in traffic, and here’s why:

• I drive 48 miles each way every day to work.  That’s 96 miles each day.

• Of these, 16 miles each way is bumper-to bumper.

• Most of the bumper-to-bumper is on an 8 lane highway (must be Northern VA).

• There are 7 cars every 40 feet for 32 miles.

• That works out to 982 cars every mile, or 31,424 cars.

• Even though the rest of the 32 miles is not bumper-to-bumper, I figure I pass at least another 4000 cars.

• That brings the number to something like 36,000 cars that I pass every day.

• Statistically, females drive half of these. That’s 18,000 women drivers!

• In any given group of females, 1 in 28 has PMS. That’s 642.

• According to Cosmopolitan, 70% describe their love life as dissatisfying or unrewarding. That’s 449.

• According to the National Institute of Health, 22% of all females have seriously considered homicide. That’s 98.

• And 34% describe men as their biggest problem. That’s 33.

• According to the National Rifle Association, 5% of all females carry weapons and this number is increasing.

That means that EVERY SINGLE DAY, I drive past at least one female that has a lousy love life, thinks men are her biggest problem, has seriously considered homicide, has PMS, and is armed.

Give her the finger?  I don’t think so.

My boyfriend Michael has lots to say. He sounds like he knows all about cars, chemistry (organic, biological and molecular), obscure musical groups and the musicians’ career paths, the video game industry including the computer processing and rendering aspects of the user interface experience… Did I sound like I know what I’m talking about with that phrase? Because I don’t. I just listen to Michael talk about this stuff on and on and on…sometimes, I try to get him to be quiet by distracting him, sometimes I’m smart and have him solve a problem for me while he’s in the mood for ‘being right’, and other times I dead-pan say to him “Why don’t you blog about it?” I figure there’s a wider audience out there on the Internets.

As far as girlfriends go, I’m pretty presumptive. For example, a subscription to Gourmet magazine implies Michael will cook me fancy dinners (even if I signed him up with a free trial when I spent >$50 at Sur la Table). And that the extra BMW key obviously belongs to me.

So when Michael told me he was doing “social media” for JIEDDO back in May because he already knew how, first I laughed, then I demanded to see his blog. He still didn’t have one. He hadn’t even accepted my LinkedIn request. To his credit, he had registered a Tumblr account but only wrote one post. And he’d kill me if I linked to it here because he wanted it to be his foray into serious self-publishing. I introduced him to another professional writer and all the guy would say about the post was: “he reeks of writer.” Yes, that’s about it…reeking.

These things left me with problematic ingredients: talkative boyfriend, deaf ears, my meddling tendencies, and our potential combined. About a week ago, I had a eureka moment after telling my coworkers during a social media presentation about this Twitter account called ShitMyDadSays. Later, Michael and I were at our favorite sushi restaurant in Old Town and I was further berating him on having no web presence. That night, I solved all the problems here when I created a blog on his behalf. Oh, and you can follow him(me) on Twitter, too.

There has been much ado about the results of this recent Stanford study that exposed folks who claim that they can ‘multitask’ at work not only can’t, but their overall quality goes down when they try. I completely agree.

A new employee emailed me while he was in the conference room doing in-processing paperwork. He asked a completely unrelated question and I responded back with “aren’t you paying attention in there?!” When he responded he could multitask with a :) at the end of his email, I shot back a link describing the study. Cute? Maybe. Multitasking? No. The result? I noticed he forgot to sign in the signature block.

I have a love-hate relationship with managing my tasks and due-outs. I like Franklin Covey’s guidance that there’s urgent things and then there’s important things; anything can be urgent if you let others set your priorities but only a few things are actually important. But ‘highly successful’ people are mum when it comes to emails and phonecalls in a role like mine where you’re the responder as much as you are the originator.

My second “real” boss taught me the concept of triage: if it’s from him, respond right away. If it’s from or CCs his boss, don’t mess anything up. People at all levels ping you for the status as if all you had to do was ‘just add water’ to the CC chain. You can have your information three ways: fast, detailed and accurate but you can only pick two at a time. And giving email updates to updates should be last on anyone’s to-do list if they’re really collaborating.

I propose a social contract of the work environment to salute the rebirth of unitasking: I’ll try to tell you my time frame for a quality response if I can’t get back to you within 48 hours. If you don’t hear back from me that day, assume I’m working on it and have aptly prioritized it to be done asap. I’ll expect the same. If it’s important and urgent, we’ll collaborate immediately.