Fw: Favorite
October 20, 2009I 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’s Blog
October 7, 2009My 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.
“and the Rebirth of Unitasking”
October 1, 2009There 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.
Weekend Wrap-Up
September 24, 2009I took it easy on Saturday and hung out in my PJs doing admin stuff on my blog and websites. Still on the kale kick and wanting a home-cookin flavor to permeate my mouth (and apartment air), I called my dad for the steps of this simple Southern recipe:
- Cover the bottom of a pan with 1/2 in. strips of bacon and render (stove on medium)
- Pile on kale that has been torn off the stems (unless you can wait for 2 hours of cook time)
- Pour 2 cups of water and bring to a boil
- Add hot sauce and stir
Cover and serve when it looks like this (about 10 minutes later):
Freshly-cracked pepper is best for kale and bacon.
Saturday night we went out with friends to the Continental Bar & Billiards in Ballston. Good times were had by all, especially the ladies because we beat the boys with an average high score in ski-ball, hoops and even shuffleboard.
On Sunday, I went with the West Point Society on a winery tour in Loudon County. There were only about 5 alums and 30 tagalongs like Michael and me. We got going around 10 am and kicked the day off with mimosas and lox bagels. First stop was Barrel Oak winery in Loudon County. We had 17 tastings before lunchtime and used our good sense of judgment to invest in about seven bottles of the nectar of the gods. After a tour of where the fermentation action happens, we picnic’d on the patio with a nice view of foothills and fought all urges to nod off.
Then the group boarded the bus and drove on to another winery in Middleburg. I have nothing of note for the second establishment except the workers were understanding enough not to have us arrested for drinking wine on their property that we brought from Barrel Oak.
I took lots of video with my new camera but incidentally forgot to actually get any pictures. Maybe – just maybe – I’ll find some time to learn how to edit video so it’s not just boring scenes you’d rather see on HDTV.
This weekend is looking to be slow…a mineral rights seminar on Saturday and of course playing with the bunnies and updating my Facebook with pictures of them in their new digs.
