“Hey, dude. What ya working on?”
Pause. “Just the same old.”
“Ah. Okay. What’s this ThomasNet?”
“It’s just a site where you can order manufactured items.”
“Like what?”
“Mm. Anything.”
“So what are you looking for?”
“I… just looking for some stuff.”
Like stuff that says you’re not interesting in having a conversation with me? Okay. The feeling’s mutual.
* * *
I know what he works on everyday. And he knows that. The first question was meant to get something unique about the day. And he knows that. Four questions later, I’m still trying to talk with him. And he’s still trying to avoid talking with me. Freak. I just feel frustrated because I’m making an effort to invest in a relationship. And it seems worthless.
* * *
I wrote that literally seconds after it happened, and I was fuming. Looking back I realize the character that more accurately represents me is the one being questioned. And I have some repenting to do.
“It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”
I was doing an army crawl over gravel and dirt. I was crawling to meet you. The moon was full, shining through some thick clouds. I was wearing a cloak and hood. It was at Uncle Montey’s house, only there was more open space around the house and mounds of dirt and rock–as if it were still under construction. I saw a shadowy figure in the distance. He fired at me with a silenced gun. I ducked behind a mound, and heard several thuds on the opposite side.
A few minutes later, you appeared, having circled around to meet me. I looked at you twice, a little surprised: it was your 6-year-old self–pajamas and all. I looked at my hands and body to see if I was also younger, but I wasn’t. I gave you a questioning glance. You held up that old wooden sword and a cap gun–both of which have been lost since we were little. “These are why.” That’s all you said. I got the impression that finding and using those weapons had made you young again.
And then I knew that my mission was to also find my old weapons so that I could become young too.
Then I woke up. I wrote it down so that I wouldn’t forget. I also thought that it might fit into the Reign of Fire storyline somehow.
There’s a girl in our ward who craves chalk–possibly because of a mineral deficiency (calcium, zinc, or iron). She said she’ll walk into a classroom and have the strongest urge to just lick the chalkboard. Sometimes she’s tempted to steal chalk and take it with her. It makes for such an interesting character. What if you had someone that had a similar obsession, say with Parker pens, I dunno. Ha ha. What?
* * *
I folded the newspaper down the middle, and creased it with my thumb and middle finger. Later, not having washed the black ink off, I ate pumpkin seeds, and licked my fingers. Mmm.
* * *
On the interstate, I cut off a dude wearing a camouflage cap and jacket. He was in a some small, older car. Usually when that happens, you can see the resentment on the driver’s face. Sometimes they’ll ride your bumper, or speed around you and glare. He didn’t seem to react at all.
It was very rude of me. And very compassionate of him.
We got out of our meeting late, past 3:30. Any other day and it wouldn’t have mattered, but I had to leave at 4:30 to get home to prepare the meal for dinner group. TR (client) wanted a new draft with last-minute changes. I told my manager the situation. He just said, “I understand if you have to leave. But do the best you can.”
I truly believed there was no possible way to finish in time, but I felt my reputation was at stake. I rushed back to my chair, throttled the mouse, and frantically started closing open windows. My computer started to lag, and I reluctantly decided to reboot. I clicked restart, let go of the mouse, and leaned back in my chair.
While Bill and crew reset the RAM, I thought through my design process. Normally we create tables in Photoshop so we can precisely match pixels, but there is really no worse program for the job. It hit me that I could create a table in Word and import it. Of course, it wouldn’t be pixel perfect, but it would get the job done in a fraction of the time. I thought about the layout of the data, the export process, and who I would email it to. When Windows and Photoshop had loaded, I hit the ground running. I was still a little frantic, but my mind was focused. I emailed the new draft with fifteen minutes to spare.
Sometimes the most time-effective work flow, ironically, requires a few minutes of not working. Sometimes you just have to reboot.
(This attitude was partially inspired by The 4-Hour Work Week, a fantastic book.)
In iTunes I can share my music with anyone connected to my local network, and they can listen/stream all they want. (But they can’t download it or put in on their iPod.) What if I could share not just on my local network (local networks are so old fashioned), but with any of my friends online?
Legally speaking, this isn’t such a stretch, is it?
This means my music would be uploaded into the cloud—hopefully to a service that would store it for free. Maybe that’d be Google. They could call it Gtunes.
If someone like Google were taking care of this (maybe I’m putting too much faith in them), the system could be indexed and shrunk by eliminating redundancies. For example, Abe owns Michael Bublé’s “Crazy Love”, so it’s uploaded to his Gtunes. When I upload the same song, Gtunes realizes they’re matching files and stores only one copy on the server. That way supporting a huge user base wouldn’t be a huge deal—80GB libraries would overlap and significantly reduce the cloudspace required.
* * *
I submitted this idea to Google Labs, and this was the reply:
Thanks for the note, Nate! A lot of us here are interested in music, but from a business perspective, it’s veeeery tricky. But I’ll pass your idea along to our Ideas forum.
-the Google Labs Guy
Tev says he wants to create a fillable Acrobat form and asks me where to start. I respond with question after question: Who’s it for? What information? How many fields? Will online work better? What about fax? I’m frustrated after a while. I wish he’d explained from the start. I don’t blame him though; everybody seems to be this way.
This morning the [client name] IT Director sent me a directive email with several paragraphs, bullet lists, and mud. Figuring out what he wanted me to do was like decrypting the DaVinci code. It may be clear in your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s clear outside of it.
I resolve to be a clearer communicator.
Recently there was a major phishing attack that got 20,000 something email users/suckers to share their passwords. These were then published on a developer forum for everyone to see.
It was a big story in online news, but the writers used the words “were compromised” and “were leaked” and made it sound as if it were a flaw in the software. When you email a phisher your password, it’s not a leak; it’s an idiot. But “20,000 Idiots” would only fit as an Onion headline.
I read several stories and they all made it sound like this, as if Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and others were the ones to blame. It kind of makes me mad. I hate the news.
I think the best way to get something out of this book is to read it while fasting. I sure empathized anyway. Each time the hunger scratched my innards. Here are a few things I learned:
- Hyper intention can be a huge roadblock in getting what you want. For example, if you’re bent on going to sleep, you’ll never fall asleep. This can be the same with laughter and other things. It is countered by paradoxical intention: try to stay awake for example. Or forget about trying to sleep at least. In the same vein: happiness cannot be pursued, but must ensue.
- Boredom is strongly tied to having a lack of meaning or purpose in life. Humans were first robbed of instinct when they graduated from being animals. More recently, they have been robbed of tradition, which would normally have given them some direction in making decisions. Our modern society is now confronted with boredom and lack of meaning, which can have many negative consequences, including suicide. The way to counter this is to find meaning. Finding fulfillment through finding meaning is what Frankl’s logotherapy is all about.
- Another modern problem is lack of responsibility. Having responsibility, even for a crime, makes a person human. Having no responsibility makes him animal or less. He does not act, but only is acted upon. Today many blame their parents, their society, or their government. And by doing so, they dehumanize themselves, which removes meaning from life.
- Things determine each other. Whereas people determine themselves. People are self determining.
- There are three ways to find meaning: to act or work (which is external), to experience or love (which is emotional and internal), and to suffer (so long as it is unavoidable suffering).
I was surprised that Frankl was teaching “begin with the end in mind” (one of the Seven Habits). It is interesting how all this truth is connected.
