lyrical musings

Editor’s Note: This post is not directed at anyone in particular, despite it’s relevance to some of our readers and personal experiences mentioned. The use of the term ‘you’ is a generic, despite bearing resemblance to Dustin Hoffman. Kidding.

There has been a new trend recently, this so-called ‘life-hacking’, which is defined by Wikipedia as:

Productivity tricks that users devise and employ to cut through information overload and organize their data.

Let me blunt: what a load of shit. If you’re so incredibly disorganized that you can’t control the flow of information in and out of your life, you need to change career fields; I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

A simple analogy:
You watch TV all day Saturday. At the end of the day, your eyes are tired, and you say to yourself “whoa, television overload”, you turn the TV off. Simple.

Are you really that addicted to your computer that you can’t turn it off? If so, stop reading this entry right now, close your browser, shut down your computer and go the hell outside. These people who read hundreds of blogs per day drive me insane - there is not a chance in hell that all of those entries are relevant to your life or work. Of those entries you read, how many do you really make use of? (Gaining some useless knowledge is not making effective use of a blog entry.) I’m willing to bet it’s far fewer than is worth all the time you’re investing in reading those entries.

I read THREE blogs on a SEMI-regular basis, two of which are authored by friends, and I read them only so I can keep abreast on their lives. I was recently informed of this new ‘life-hack’ called `going dark` - getting away from all blogs, emails, internet, etc. for some period of time. Another erroneous crock of dog crap. While this may be ‘great’ for managing your addiction to your computer, you fail to realize that all the people that normally know you as a well connected, savvy internet user now just see you as failing to respond to them in a timely manor, furthering your ‘information overload’ by sending an extra 10 emails saying “Did you get my last email?”

‘Life hacking’ does not simply apply to the digital world, or so lifehack.org claims. It’s about “living life to the fullest” - you’re telling me I need someone else to tell me how to live my life to the fullest? Come on people.

I skimmed (I couldn’t bring myself to read) this article. Again, who the hell are you to tell me how to life my life?

Originally, this post had a lot more anger, and a lot more valid points to argue that life-hacks are quite possibly the most useless thing since the fish pen:

Point being: take a couple of hours, go outside, and avoid living your life on your computer.

My random discovery of the evening: a huge stack of DVDs that were unlabeled, and that I hadn’t seen before, or so I thought. I thought I’d provide a brief synopsis of my findings:

• Atlas, Live at the Freeman Center - a promo DVD I did for them many years ago, with Cody on Bass and David on Drums. Wow, what a time
• A copy of “The Hazy Zone” - a film done by some friends for the roast of another friend, Matt Haselton. Holy shit was it funny.
• 10 Things I Hate About You - a chick flick. The only reason it made the list is because I remember scouring all of Santoro Hall trying to find a girl that owned it so I could copy it and have a romantic movie date with my girlfriend of the time before she got there for the weekend. Heh.
• My Public Speaking Final - a copy of the movie we made for my public speaking project back in 2005. Wow, how times have changed.
• A sports segment from the 2005 season of The Navigator. Hey, at least the Captains were doing well back then.
• The original, never aired pilot of The Navigator - With Eric Harkins and Emily Schwab as our anchors. Joey Kirchgessner at the sports desk. A hilarious reminder of our humble beginnings.
• h0t sh*t - A DVD I filmed when some guys stopped me outside the Freeman Center one night and asked me to film a commercial for their new record company. Comedic gold.
• Black Betty Extended Edition - for those of you that don’t know, you can go to YouTube, type in CNU black betty, and see myself and a bunch of my friends making a fool of ourselves and CNU. I found the extended edition, which features a bunch of things not seen in the YouTube version. Good thing, too.

I need to get in to campus to download the rest of my work onto disk before someone over there gets hot fingers and erases it. Funny stuff, though. It was nice running down memory lane for a bit.

Lists are a personal favorite of mine - I use them all the time, to keep track of things I want to do, need to do, or simply want to keep track of. You’ll see them featured here from time to time - some facetious, others of a more noble nature. Tonight I feature a new one:

The Top 10 Things I’ve Learned About Smithfield, Virginia

10. Dirt roads are abundant. To get to work, it requires traveling several, whilest only being a few miles from a major city. How odd.

9. Speed limits are optional - unless you’re somewhere near a certain company’s plants. Most roads don’t even have one posted.

8. The smell. There is no way to describe ‘the smell’. Just…go with it.

7. It would be faster to travel to Smithfield by boat than car for most.

6. You can easily pick out the locals from the employees of a certain company.

5. There is a pig on the water tower. Or so I’m told - I haven’t seen it myself yet (due to the direction I travel).

4. Don’t speed around a certain company’s plants. This deserves a second mention due to the fact that the Smithfield Police spend their lunch hour betting on the number of employees of a certain company they can catch between the hours of 1 and 5 PM.

3. There are an inexplicable number of attractive women employed by a certain company. Most are in the form of interns, some foreign exchange students. Why they choose to work there, I have no idea, but, all the better.

2. There are some really nice fishing piers there. Check them out if you’re in to that sort of thing.

1. Man, this list had a point when I started….damned being tired all the time.

Ah well. When I originally thought up this post, it was supposed to be funny….so much for that idea. Time to go study for a useless Physics 152 exam.

Oh, one more thing - as the title of this blog is lyrical musings, I thought it important to explain why that is so. I frequently set lyrics to events in my life, and so it seems appropriate. Occasionally, I’ll close a post with lyrics that have some sort of meaning. So, here we go:

“I don’t want your advice, because you never win. Peer pressure - I don’t give in.”

I figured since I had some post-work time this evening I’d get around to writing that introductory post I’ve been promising myself I’d write for some time.

Over the years, I’ve had a whole slew of blogs/online meanderings I’ve either worked on, co-authored, or originated. I was never very good at keeping up with them, and in some cases (LiveJournal), took an incredibly opposing viewpoint on them. (My rant about LiveJournal will come up at some point, I’m sure, but to summarize: change LiveJournal to BitchJournal, and you’ll have it’s day-to-day usage).

With that in mind, I’m going to use this space a bit differently. I have no intention of forcing regular updates - they’ll come when I feel like it and will be sporadically timed. They won’t all necessarily be in the post format as this one is, you’ll see below a posting of some BS homework I was working on.

If you’re wondering, this blog will be primarily tag driven, save the MX6 category. I own another domain (prosixmotorsport.com) which I use for keeping people updated on the progress of my Mazda MX6 that I’m rebuilding. That domain points to the MX6 category page.

I’ve got notes in my mind as to what this blog is, and what it isn’t, which I’ll share at some point. I promise I’ll also get around to fixing the tags and writing an about page - just as soon as I get to it.

In the mean time, feel free to comment on anything you see here, or use the contact form to get my attention should I ignore you for some extended period of time.

1. Would you be comfortable working in a hyper-flexible organization like Google, or do you prefer a more structured environment?

I would be quite comfortable working in a hyper-flexible organization like Google. I frequently find that I can be most efficient when I am allowed to adjust my schedule/timing/task as new information comes in, ‘roll with the punches’ if you will. Having this fleibility would allow me to complete more work in less time, making me more effective personally and for the organization.

2. Do you think Google will be able to retain its organization informality at 10,000 employees? 20,000? Microsoft has 61,000 employees.

Google being the incredible growing organization that it is will always maintain some resemblance of informality. That being said, I would be surprised if they are able to maintain their current level indefinitely. Their management structure has been designed to allow them the ability to make people feel as if they are free to go about their business, and for the most part they are, yet still gives upper management someone to hold responsibility should a deadline be missed or a product not up to standard.

3. Draw a corporate structure diagram for Google.

Not pictured.

Ugh….I hate BS busy work assignments.