So I normally wouldn’t gush all over any minor domestic accomplishment but I’m sure you know that I am addicted to organizational systems. One came together this past weekend when I recalled a recent episode of Good Eats and saw a righteous item in Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Traffic Ticket Evasion
So most of you probably know that I’ve been pulled over many times but have rarely ended up with a ticket on my record. All of my luck with the system had been pre-California since, until Christmas, I had never been pulled over in this state. But when that ten-year streak came to an end in a blaze of high beams and the shimmer of blue lights, I decided that I’d want to keep my “perfect record” streak alive and get out of this ticket. While my battle lasted only about 30 minutes, I want to show you one courageously fought battle with The Man.
Intel: Love It Or Hate It
I’ve now got all of a few weeks under my belt at VMware and am starting to learn the ropes of the facilities and even my job. Well, its fair to say that I nearly completely understand the facilities and nearly completely don’t understand my job. But I’m working hard to rectify that. Upon reflection of the setup at VMware versus that at Intel, I’ve started to formulate a list of the things that I loved and hated about the work environment at Intel. Since I’ve only had about four office jobs I don’t have much to compare this to so I’m hoping you’ll comment and throw in observations about your own work.
The Taint
I humbly submit the following for your approval.
Best Bond Ever
A few weeks back I saw the new James Bond movie and came back with a renewed appreciation for the series. Over forty years or so James Bond has persevered as an icon of American culture. This in spite of the fact that the character hails from a island of pasty-face pussies and was played for nearly a decade by a limp-wristed sissy. In honor of this hero of American cinema, I have decided to provide you uncultured swine with a short list of Bond movies that you should see to understand the God and the men who have played him.
Miss Cleo
Several years ago I read The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Within those pages, I learned about and started to follow the Amazing (James) Randi. A devoted skeptic and debunker of anything paranormal, he’s been offering a $1,000,000 prize to anyone, anywhere that can do anything that he can’t explain rationally.
Landmark Education
Last night Ruth (this is the person from my The Game post that has recently been upgraded from coworker to friend) joined me for a night of fun at my first Landmark Education class. If you haven’t heard of these guys, you have to read the Wikipedia article on them to get the scoop. They are a professional development business/group/cult that transforms aimless, hopeless, malcontents into laser-focused, empowered, fully-realized, breakthrough…oh, you get it.
Squatters’ Rights
Have you ever seen the movie Pacific Heights? It is a decent thriller starring Michael Keaton as a tenant in a converted house in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco. Keaton tears up the apartment, introduces a huge quantity of pests into the place, and constantly drives the landlords and other tenants crazy with noise. Utilizing the liberal, renter-friendly laws of the city, he hopes to drive the building vacant or win a civil settlement for unlawful eviction. I’m having this problem right now with my place in San Francisco.
Broken Machine
Did anyone hear that grinding, screeching sound last night? That sound was the wheels of government coming to a stop. Like sand thrown in fine clockworks, last night’s election results were portentous signs of certain malfunction. Only complete replacement of the fouled gears will return the working mechanism.
It was kind of a difficult election. On one hand we had the desperate, corrupt, page-fondling greed-heads of the Republican party. On the other hand we have the aimless, hopeless, uber-bureaucratic Democrats whose entire political strategy seemed to be to sit in the back of the room and point and laugh. Representatives from each spent ample time on their post-election political pulpits explaining their intent to reach across the aisle to form a new unity government. That type of public emotional grab-ass is a certain prelude to the the vitriol each party will soon be spewing for the other’s lack of cooperation.
Shit is about ready to get much, much worse.
The Grand Social Experiment
About three weeks ago I had lunch with a coworker. Ruth is a coworker of mine like Stephen Davis was a classmate of mine. We inhabit the same space, pass each other weekly about our daily business, and exchange smiles of anonymous benevolence that are shared among familiar strangers. But this digression is not precisely relevant to my story. I upped the relationship and asked Ruth out to lunch which resulted in her loaning me a copy of a book she enjoyed, The Game, by Neil Strauss. This book has set off more than one interesting conversation among friends and the Grand Experiment.
