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Just Indulge Me For A While
Posted 11.14.11 at 07:25 AM UTC
Tagged efendi | # | Comment [0]
Aside from the beautiful HTML that is generated by efendi directly (I'm not screwing with my templating engine), this new design is pretty much authentic ancient HTML, circa 2.0 or so. No stylesheets, background set on the BODY tag, classic stuff.
I have a real classy template I'm working on now in parallel, so enjoy my under construction view for a while!
Corporate Lingo
Posted 11.09.11 at 05:25 PM UTC
Tagged work | # | Comment [0]
A lot of people talk about buzzwords and acronyms when they think about corporate communication, but I tend to focus on a fascinating and really irritating side-concept: the pervasive cliche. A corporate cliche is not a buzzword because it's not a real focus or objective ("mission statement," etc.). It really just serves to show that you're able to sniff the phrase out as a conversational trend and over-use it yourself.
These things spread through an organization like a plague. Right now, we're really hot on "space." This one drives me nuts because it's starting to get shoehorned into a lot of places where it doesn't even make sense. Or, shall I say, a lot of spaces.
Used properly: "He's very experienced in that space." "In the tight gas space, we're making a lot of progress."
I think it starts to fall apart when you use it as a proxy for a time period, like "in the project definition space." That's a phase, not a space. Rates versus gradients and all that.
And, ironically, it stumbles when you use it to denote a physical location, since you've so figurativized the term it doesn't make sense in a literal connotation anymore. "Go over to Joe's space" starts to sound like you're in The Cell with Jennifer Lopez. We mostly use "seat" or "chair" for that, with the more humane ergonomics advocates using "desk." Office services people use "workstation" or "work space" (that kind of fixes the whole "space" issue), but those make it sound like you spend your days stamping out Mickey Mouse erasers.
Generally, "space" will get your point across, but as it gets pervasive it's just like, we have a billion ways to say this, why limit yourself to one? For some reason, it really makes you sound like a consultant. Like your understanding of something as a topic transcends its status as an "issue" or "area."
This may be a pan-cultural one, but the overuse of "right?" when talking is also quite irritating, especially when you know darn well that this is the first time your talkee has heard about something. "I just approved that, right?" I don't know, did you? Aren't you trying to tell me that?
The paradoxical part of "right?" is that you are normally saying it only when you're certain of what you're saying. It's kind of a quick two-pitch voicing, where it drops down in a "mi-re" rather than an interrogative "re-fa?". You do a "re-fa?" when you actually are asking. A "mi-re" "right?" is just kind of dismissive, borderline patronizing. Not my favorite.
This one nears buzzword status, but "networking" is just going nutso. You're supposed to "network" with your peers on a five minute coffee break. Can't they just say, "complain about the length of the meeting?" I mean, if you're on a break the issue can't be that pressing, and in just five minutes you're not going to tell life stories and dream dreams.
Since you're all in the meeting together, nobody has learned the results of an interesting sports game since being removed from the outside world, so the meeting itself is pretty much all you have to talk about. Then, time permitting, it typically just digresses to where you live and how long it takes you to drive to work, or to the meeting if it's offsite. It extends into economics if there are tolls involved. If you have older ladies in the room, you often also get some baking and grandkids conversations going.
Half the people on any meeting break are just mad that the total time of the meeting is being extended by the length of the break, and the rest of them are so busy trying to get to a bathroom or find a donut that they don't talk to anyone anyway.
To be positive on one, I think "bio-break" is hilarious and actually serves to broaden the potty break concept without getting overly specific about bodily functions. It also covers things like food and water but suggests that the time should be shorter and more focused than a standard break, which actually serves to sidestep "networking" as the stated purpose.
Welcome to the Future
Posted 11.05.11 at 05:57 AM UTC
Tagged music | # | Comment [0]
I had wondered exactly why Brad Paisley decided to write Father of the Bride into "Back to the Future". Turns out he married Annie.
I promise this isn't going to turn into a country music blog, but it's not like there's much else going on.
Gerrymandering
Posted 11.04.11 at 07:01 PM UTC
Tagged nonsense | # | Comment [0]
They drew the congressional district boundary to divide Democrat and Republican districts right against the border of my neighborhood.
While We Be Bloggin', Two Other Things
Posted 10.31.11 at 05:38 AM UTC
Tagged nonsense | # | Comment [0]
Great YouTube comment [general sic applies]:
"Dear YouTube/ VEVO, I would appreciate it if you didnt advertise Lady gaga underneath a Josh Abbott song. First off they are nothing alike and second off it makes me sick to my stomach. Thanks."
Form over function:
Location of current cupcake stockpile: the original bakery plastic container
Contents of brand new cupcake dome: plastic pumpkins
I've Got My Philosophy
Posted 10.31.11 at 05:09 AM UTC
Tagged nonsense | # | Comment [1]
My biggest philosophical gripe with completely self-contained evolutionary theory is that science almost always introduces principles that (at least at a high level) have some sense of coherence with each other.
Go through a mechanical engineering curriculum: the heat guys say heat moves like electricity flowing across a resistor, the electrical guys say electricity works like water flowing through a pipe, the fluid guys say water behaves like a rock rolling down a hill, and the mechanical guys say stress moves through a beam like heat flowing across a sheet of metal.
Everything goes to hell if you just leave it alone and let stuff happen. Any observation other than that makes no sense to me. Where do we have any sort of parallel instance where things just got amazingly, nay, unfathomably better, just by sitting around or unknowingly going about their everyday business? (Unrelated note: this is the only legal use of "everyday" in my book.)
Sure, you've got a billion monkeys at a billion typewriters, but who's making them type? Paraphraseth St. Leary, the cheetah can't drive a car, at least not very far.
Physicists hate this, but even many little cliche practical phrases are rooted in physics. Opposites attract, action/reaction, etc.
In other news, a moth just brained itself on my laptop's chassis, leaving a little greasy spot. Score -1 for citronella.
Postscript: light behaves as a wave and a particle, which is maybe the fundamental philosophical reason it gives physicists so much trouble to describe. It's like it resembles altogether too much of the world, in conflicting ways, all at once. No accident it's so strongly associated with God.
Flash Lob
Posted 10.31.11 at 04:35 AM UTC
Tagged random | # | Comment [0]
I don't like Mitt Romney.
That is all. Good night.
Miscellaneous
Posted 10.18.11 at 02:40 PM UTC
Tagged nonsense | # | Comment [0]
Christmas 2012 falls into the ideal schedule of a Monday Christmas Eve. Swapping in an alternating off-Friday gives you a five day weekend.
First Law of Photo Printing at Target: Yes, the machine is broken.
I have always felt like one of the reasons to rhyme poetry and music is to feel a sense of purpose, almost predestination, to the content. If it fits well enough to rhyme, it's meant to be.
Picking a greeting card is like doing this at a pro level, only instead of rhyming it's trying to align with someone else's thoughts.
Second Law of Photo Printing at Target: No, we don't know how to fix it.
The $1 section at Target is ingenious in its value to teachers and others needing tchotchkes, but it's almost having a Wal-Mart zone right at the entrance. I'm surprised that the micromanaged feel of the Target experience chooses to accommodate that.
Gewgaw, which can be typed with only the left hand, is a synonym of tchotchke.
You can also type tchotchke with only the left hand, but you have to move around a lot and have really good aim.
Some sub-$100 webcams now have webservers built in. I hate when I can buy things better, faster, and cheaper than I intended to cobble together as a project out of freebie scrap.
I get creeped out by greeting cards that get too specific. Especially the "we've been through so much" category. When it gets that personal, there are only two words you need to know: "Blank Inside."
When I built my first media center PC in college, I had thermal problems for the first time ever. I vowed never again to allow myself to have thermal problems with a computer. I have had thermal problems with every computer I've built since then, with increasing severity.
The micromanaged feel of Target cannot accommodate a standard red rubber plunger with a wooden handle, as the flimsy lime green plastic one in my garage can attest.
I don't see how foreigners can ever understand helping verbs in English. I'm sure they have been having to have lessons on having helping verbs in their sentences.
Trying to hide a speaker system in a small storage hassock has both acoustic and aesthetic problems that make it essentially prohibitive on both counts.
The premium the market is currently willing to pay for portability and compactness makes a high-end unsubsidized cellphone be twice as expensive as a decent netbook.
Tablet PCs are pure potential, but in most cases that's almost where they stop for now.
When they come out with a foldable Kindle with integrated front- or back-lighting, I'm in.
The psychology that goes into wearing a set of golden teeth caps encrusted with diamonds probably merits entire volumes of explanation.
Remember when iPods were so new and popular that 50 Cent was flashing his like bling in his videos?
Dreams where your teeth fall out indicate a subconscious feeling of powerlessness. I, on the other hand, typically have the "unprepared" genre of bad dreams, although my teeth did fall out one time.
When I have a "falling" dream, I'm normally just taking a standard step rather than dealing with some kind of precipice. I still awake with that sinking feeling, so to speak.
The Big Bang Theory tiptoes along the nexus of ridiculing a group of people while retaining those same people as perhaps their biggest fan base.
Databases these days do so much sharding and caching that it's almost an impressive surprise when a change is reflected immediately. It's also a potential indication that the site would totally blow up if its user base increased tenfold.
A Penny for My Thoughts, Oh No, I'll Sell Them for a Dollar
Posted 10.17.11 at 05:49 AM UTC
Tagged music | # | Comment [0]
I had just recently given up on the folk revival I had long anticipated, and had begun instead blathering about the potential invention of a new instrument.
I think I was under-appreciating country music's recent developments.
This was actually written by the singer, with a light nod to Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" (flashed on the screen just before the video cuts off).
Aside from the light drums, some unconventional instruments, and that rock 'n' roll haircut on the bassist, you're looking at a fairly strong bluegrass foundation, especially the mandolin and fiddle. I also have to include an artistic nod to 2:37, where they subtly make it look like she's in the painting.
Combine that with what's going on with Eli Young, Lady Antebellum, Jake Owen's near-classic "Barefoot Blue Jean Night," Brad Paisley's Midas touch, Jason Aldean's rap-country fusion in "Dirt Road Anthem," and a pop side-stage actually quite well-represented by Taylor Swift, you're looking at a genre, like it or not, that's blowing the rest of rock/pop out of the water. Darius Rucker, best known as Hootie, has also rebooted his career into country, where he's seen significant success.
The Buzz is digging out Marcy Playground for literally almost the fifteenth year ("Sex and Candy," their only significant single, debuted in 1997), and that's the "new music" station. The next time I hear The Cardigans' "Lovefool," I think I'll complain to the FCC. It's ridiculous. Look at all the American Idol winners heading over to country. The newest guy is pretty much a Josh Turner knockoff, but he's making some respectable stuff all the same.
I would also direct attention to a segment of the summer single slate, which featured I suppose you could say meta-music, such as Brad Paisley's "This is Country Music," the fairly despicable "Country Must Be Country-Wide," and a pretty significant revival of Alan Jackson's 1994 "Gone Country." I'm looking at a genre that sees it's winning.
It's just sad to see mainstream rock so lost. Anything "new" I hear right now pretty much sounds at best like Chevelle covering a Fall Out Boy song.
This isn't dead-dog boots-under-wrong-bed country here. This is thought-out stuff, often going back to classic structures like the old parallel chorus word play structure (where the same chorus or theme plays out in different contexts after each verse).
The general acceptability of the professional songwriter in country allows a better specialization or compartmentalization of lyrics, musical, and vocal talent, but you're definitely seeing some of the newer bands writing their own stuff. While I want rock to come back, it's been fun to spend some time on the country side of things, after a fairly dreary time between the fall of Garth Brooks and a few years ago.
