Moving stories

Y’all know how I love the sidebars of life all around me—yard decorations, business signs, bumper stickers and vanity license plates… I like playing with what the stories behind them might be.

Now, this one I’m guessing belongs to someone from western South America, and there were nine people also from that part of the world ahead of him/her at the DMV.

But this one is a little more interesting—it’s on one of those boxy Honda Elements that is often parked on the street outside my flat overnight (because there’s frost or dew on it when I walk to the Metro station in the morning).

Visual Basic is so turn-of-the-century. It dates right about to the time when pre-Time-Warner AOL had pretensions of being everybody’s on-ramp to the information superhighway. I wonder if the Element’s owner has had the license plate since before the dot-bomb, or whether s/he is just nostalgic for the Good Old Days?

Food for thought

Well, what can I say—we each #resist in our own fashion.

(Actually—the fact that "meat clown" is even a thing worries me a good deal.) 

Brainstorming downtime

Ah, HR—always trying to be relevant.

The latest out of the satrapy is the vaunted “Employee Downtime Area”, announced last year without any employee demand whatsoever. They’re taking the only place in the 13-floor edifice where you can get away from your desk to eat your lunch (without leaving the building) and converting it into “a new area where employees can now relax and socialize with their colleagues in a fun, informal setting.”

Yippee.

To this end, here’s what we can look forward to later this month:

“Brainstorm Corner* with couches, television/AV monitor and whiteboard wall

“Foosball Table with adjacent high-top tables and stools for viewing/queuing

“Mini Free Library (Take-a-Book, Leave-a-Book honor system) and lounge chairs”

*Don’t even ask, because I just can’t…

I don’t believe the ladies of HR have entirely thought this thing through, bless their hearts. Because how are you expected to be downtiming when your colleagues are either brainstorming with the whiteboard and TV monitor, and/or whooping it up at the foosball table?

Wanna know what employees would really appreciate? Employer-supplied coffee and tea on each floor and an espresso machine in that “Employee Downtime Area”.

Because nothing says “relax” like a double latte with a shot of hazelnut syrup.

Cyberstalking

I’ve shared a selection of Facebook follies before—how they’re always trying to prompt me into having the sort of life they think I should be having.

Well, they’re back.

In the space of less than 24 hours, I got two of their intrusive “suggestions”.

First there was this chirpy greeting:

Seriously—if that’s not creepy, I don’t know what is.

And then there was this, must have been Sunday morning, although I didn’t see it until night.

Guys—if your algorithm hasn’t picked up on the fact that I have never commented one way or another on any sporting event, then you need to hire a whole new batch of SDEs.

(Oh, and P.S.: why on earth would I want to share that with anyone?)

They put this crap right at the top of your timeline, like it’s so important. And however many times I click on the “see fewer bits of nonsense like this”, they still come back to see if I’ve changed my mind. Like a four-year-old.

I do not need Facebook to sidle up with a weather forecast to let me know that they know where I am. And I don’t need their assumptions that I’m watching anything on TV at any time.

What I would like would be for them to quit resetting my timeline preference, and to explain to me why things that show up in the Facebook mobile app do not appear in my browser feed (and vice versa).

Gratitude Monday: Pitching a fit

My department at work sponsored a six week class whose aim is to teach our colleagues some of the principles and methodologies of coming up with workable business ideas. You know, like “Airbnb for dogs” (an actual thing, which I know because they just closed a $40M round of funding a few months ago), or Birchbox for demolitions (not an actual thing. That I know of. Yet).

After a month and a half of learning and practicing this, the culmination was a pitch competition: each of the eleven* of us had to pitch a business idea to a panel of three judges, with six finalists being chosen to go one more round, where they post a two-minute video of our pitch to the Intranet, and our colleagues throughout the company vote on two final winners.

(*Eleven because, while five people dropped out well before the pitch week, four more just announced less than a day before the big session that they wouldn’t be participating. No particular reason, beyond, “stuff happens.” Lesson learned for the next time we do this: we make people sign an agreement that if we spend this money bringing an external instructor in to teach you, you drag your sorry ass to the finish line.)

Well, dear reader, I’ll cut a long and shaggy story short: the good news is that I did not disgrace myself. The bad news is that I’m one of the finalists and therefore have to cough up a video. (Even though I am not eligible for the prize, since my department is putting this thing on. And it’s a good prize.)

And I would rather swallow ground glass than be in a video, much less be the only person in a video.

Well, but (and this is the focus of my gratitude) I am not without resources. Friends of mine run a photography and videography studio, and I traded them an hour of my writing work for them shooting my video. I spent a good part of the day yesterday with them, working on this (and the writing project). It was fascinating, because although I got plenty tired of hearing my voice muff my spiel take after take in front of the green screen, they kept me going, and I’m almost looking forward to seeing the finished product.

And therefore, in conclusion, I’m grateful that I did not have to go through this ordeal all alone, just me and my laptop cam.

Thank you. I actually will be here all week, and you should definitely tip your server.