Thought for the Day (2015-11-30)
30 November 2015 • by bob • Humor
From Coleman Cox (in 1922):
"Never dispute the woman who says she has a model husband. Webster's Dictionary says a model is a small imitation of the real thing."
Cool Towns Around The World
12 November 2015 • by bob • Travel, Humor
I'm not sure what it is, but there's something cool about the street names in this tiny town outside of Eindhoven in the Netherlands... I can't quite put my finger on it...
Work/Life Balance
03 November 2015 • by bob • Humor, Work
Some people I know should read this... not that I'm naming any names, of course. 
Political Changes
03 November 2015 • by bob • Politics, Humor
Here's your election thought of the day from the good folks at www.despair.com...
The Italian Job VIII
02 November 2015 • by bob • Humor, Bicycling
My friend and fellow cycling enthusiast Keith shared the following security camera footage from the good folks at Woodinville Bicycle which captures the hilarious antics of a would-be thief attempting to steal a bicycle... I think we have a future Darwin Award recipient in the making.
Say Hello to My Little Friend
04 August 2015 • by Bob • Arizona, Humor
I found this little guy hiding under my desk as I started my workday... I think I'll be wearing socks today.
Actually, I first noticed this scorpion running across the floor in my office from west to east in order to hide behind my computers. As I attempted to root him out of the cables so I could squash him, I lost sight of him, so I moved around my desk to get a better view. As I did so, I noticed a scorpion running across the floor in my office - from west to east. So then I was thinking, "Did I see only one scorpion or two?" Well to tell you the truth, in all the excitement I kinda lost track. But seeing that this is a probably a bark scorpion, the most venomous scorpion in North America and known to cause numbness, tingling, vomiting, and death, I've gotta ask myself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do I, punk?
(Obvious hat tip to "Dirty Harry." 
)
Living with Adult Children
13 February 2015 • by Bob • Family, Humor
There was a brief period when all three of our adult children were living with my wife and me in Seattle. Our youngest was starting college, our middlest had just returned from a year living in Peru, and our oldest had relocated from Texas to Washington following her graduation from college.
Things are different now; our children have all left home, married, and started lives of their own.
However, when I was recently going through several folders on my computer with collections of old files, I discovered a Word document with a note that I had typed up for my children during that short boomerang season when they were living with my wife and me as adults.
Notice to Everyone in this Household:
- You will wash your own dishes immediately after you are done with them.
- If you have friends over, you will wash their dishes immediately after they are done with them.
- You will carry any dishes from your room (or your car, or wherever) back to the kitchen immediately after you are done with them.
- If the dishes in the dishwasher have not been run, you will put your own dishes in the dishwasher.
Contrary to Popular Belief:
- It will not hurt you to periodically empty the dishwasher as a favor for the dish person.
- It will not hurt you to periodically cook dinner.
Do you think this note this made any difference in their behavior?
Code Monkey Save World
26 January 2015 • by Bob • Art, Humor, Ponderings
OK - I have to make a shameless admission: I really like Jonathan Coulton's music. Jonathan's style is sort of like modern-day-Internet-geek-cyber-folk-pop, as if that's a real genre.
Anyway, years ago he wrote a song called "Code Monkey," which became something of an Internet hit. (Hey, I'd call over one million downloads a hit.) If you're curious about the song, you can browse to http://youtu.be/MNl3fTods9c in order to see it with the lyrics.
That being said, fans of "Code Monkey" might not be aware that Jonathan teamed up with Greg Pak and a few additional artists, and together they converted "Code Monkey" and several of Jonathan's other songs (like "Skullcrusher Mountain," "Re: Your Brains," etc.) into a weird little graphic novel.
Truth be told, I'm not a graphic novel kind of guy, but I love the song - so I ordered a copy through Greg Pak's online shop.
My signed copy of the graphic novel just arrived, and it was a great read; it was fun to see the characters from so many of Jonathan's songs brought to life, even if it was just for a hundred pages or so.
For those of you who are familiar with the song, you're probably wondering to yourself, "Does Code Monkey finally tell his manager to write that @#$% login page himself and win the heart of Matilde, the girl of his dreams?"
Well, you'll just have to order the book and find that out for yourself.
(FYI - The graphic novel was a Kickstarter project in 2013 which was fully-funded in just 12 hours; it eventually reached $340,270 of it's original $39,000 goal.)
Drum Circles and Conference Calls Do Not Mix
21 July 2014 • by bob • Work, Technology, Humor
Earlier today our organization participated in a unique "Team Building" exercise: our organization hosted a Drum Circle, wherein a motivational speaker walked various members of our organization through a set of various polyrhythms with the intended goal of creating music as a "team." The idea seems plausible enough on paper, and I am fairly certain that if I was participating in-person I might have received something of value from the experience.
However, I work remotely, as do several dozen of my coworkers. Instead of hearing music and a motivational speaker, those of us who could not attend in-person heard nothing but noise. Lots and lots of noise. The entire experience was reduced to hours of mind-numbing cacophony for anyone attending the meeting via the conference call, and my only takeaway was that I had lost several hours of my life.
Shortly after the meeting had ended I put together the following animation to show my coworkers what the meeting was like for remote attendees:
| Attending a Drum Circle Remotely. |
With that in mind, please take my advice: take a look at https://binged.it/2s4KbLd for companies who offer team building exercises such as this, and avoid them as much as possible if you value your remote employees.