They'd none of them be missed

For my first-ever investment in a start-up, I participated in a crowd-funding campaign by a young woman in London who’s on a mission to get people to be more mindful in their use of digital tech.

I first came across Anastasia Dedyukhina through her 2016 TEDx talk, “Could you live without a smartphone?” The video is well worth your time.

My mobile phone is not actually grafted onto my body, but she had me at the line about using sat-nav even when I know the way. So when, about six months later, I heard she was raising money to publish her book Homo Distractus, I threw a few tenners at her Indiegogo campaign, which got me on the list to receive a copy when it’s published (hard copy, not ebook) and signed up for her #DigitalDetox daily challenge for the month of January.

Through that, each day this month I get a link to a video with an idea of one thing to do that will help break people’s addiction to their devices, with a glimpse at the science behind that suggestion. So far, they’ve included things like make room for boredom (whenever you’re feeling bored, don’t reach for something to entertain yourself; just step into it, bruh), incorporate physical breaks into the day, get into nature and cut out online multitasking (by only having one application or browser tab open at a time).

That last one stopped me in my tracks, because at any given time on my work computer I’ve got two browsers and three windows (with a minimum of three, four and four tabs, respectively), and Outlook, Excel and Word open, so I can hop from one thing to another. And, in fairness, my work requires that I very frequent web research for the documents I write, so it would be cumbersome indeed for me to close things down and have to wait to reopen each one before diving into the work. That would detrain my line of thought by an order of magnitude over my current focus level, so I think I’m going to have to pass this one over.

However, this is the one that I want to shoot into the sky with fireworks, and tattoo on some people’s foreheads:

Way, way too many people are so eager to slap something up on Facebook and Twitter before they even know what the hell the content is—just so they can be first. (Whether or not they actually are.) They’re utterly mindless and they clutter my timeline with crap, so they deserve a permanent time-out from all social media, no doubt about it.

But I’ve got an addendum to Anastasia’s suggestion: people who reply or comment on a post, when they clearly have not read either the posting (beyond the headline) or the material it links to, should skip the time-out and slide straight to hell, with their Windows XP desktop computer shoved up their butt. (As an aside, it's been my observation that the people who do this are more likely than not to be asses in other areas, including being the hero of every story they tell, and being self-anointed experts in every subject that arises in a discussion.) For a while I baited one malefactor whose ignorance and ego rendered them oblivious to what was going on, but I got tired, and now I just ignore them.

If they just dried up and blew away, it would certainly make the world a better place, but they seem to have infinite staying power. So ignoring them is my suggestion of the day. Consider it a kind of #nitwitdetox challenge.

Pressing all the right buttons

This came across my Twitter feed, and it was just too good to let pass:

It’s the third tweet that got me.

Out of the gutter

When I went out for my daily complete refilling of my bird feeder (with these cold temperatures, the little guys need to maximize their caloric intake) I noticed this:

You may not think it’s anything to write home about, but I’ve never seen water frozen to the spout of the gutter.

Yes, I’m easily amused.

Yesterday it reached close to 50 degrees, so my anomaly melted. Which I’m perfectly happy about. I’m ready for some weather that doesn’t cut to the bone, even if I have to trade interesting photo ops for it.

Let me 'splain...

There was an inclement weather alert yesterday in the District They Call Columbia, warning of freezing rain and the dreaded wintery mix starting mid-afternoon. This caused a good number of people to bail out of work early so they could get home before the onslaught. I was one of the evacuees, because I know I don’t know how to drive in snow or ice, and I also know that most of the people in Virginia don’t know how to drive in it.

Unfortunately, one of my colleagues, who also goes to the end of the Silver Line, caught up with me, and for the entire 50-minute commute I had to listen to him mansplain the company’s organization, product management, artificial intelligence and his shifting role in various tech departments.

This colleague is not what you would call particularly aware—it never occurs to him to ask about what someone else is doing, except as a springboard for him to return the conversation to him. I know this, so I try to limit my interaction with him. When it’s unavoidable I just ask a few questions, nod and say, “Right” a lot.

But yesterday on the Metro, it was just painful. Yap, yap, yap, organization; yap, yap, yap, product management; yap, yap, yap, managing developers. His understanding of the organization is limited; that of product management non-existent (and, surprisingly, his grasp of AI is tenuous); and I don’t really give a toss about him managing developers. (Interesting, though, that they don’t seem to be overjoyed at the prospect, and it doesn’t seem to occur to him to make any moves to remediate that situation.)

I’ve been particularly disinclined to listen to his claptrap about product management since the time he told me, “We don’t need product management on [communication and collaboration platform that is God-awful precisely because there was no product manager involved in it at any point in its conception, design, building or maintenance] because we’ve got a project manager, a UX designer and I’m the technical director.”

But all the way home yesterday, he expatiated on stuff he knows nothing about, completely confident that I’d have nothing at all to add. It's occasions like these that prove the Theory of Relativity, because that 50 minutes felt like a day and a half.

This reminded me of someone I used to know, a Navy photographer and videographer. I learned a lot from about photography, and I really valued his expertise. But he just could not stick the idea that I, too, might have some understanding of things on my own account. Very often I’d turn around to find him cutting down something I’d said, and explaining how I must be wrong.

For example: I was telling him once about staying at the Rittenhouse Hotel, in Philadelphia, a luxury property by anyone’s standards. And I marveled that it cost $265 a night (which 20 years ago was big bucks). He shook his head and said I couldn’t possibly have paid that much because—and he pointed to the rate notice on the inside door of his Best Western room—“It says this much, but that’s not what I’m paying.”

Great non sequitur, dude, but I think I know what charge appeared on my credit card bill.

Then, he was going to come out to visit me when I lived in Oakton, and I sent him directions. (This was before the Internet, and before mobile phones; primitive, I know.) I told him to go out I-66, exit at Nutley, and follow directions to my place off Jermantown. He told me, “I think you’re wrong. My map doesn’t show I-66 going out that far.”

Dude—your map is from 15 years before the 90s; I-66 has been extended since then. How ‘bout you give me credit for knowing how to get home?

And one more: I told him where I lived in Reston, and that I used to walk around the edge of the golf course. He insisted that I couldn’t live there and walk around the golf course because the golf course was on the other side of the Toll Road.

Right—I regularly hallucinate, don’t I? It couldn’t possibly be that there are two golf courses in this town, and that I actually do know where I’m walking, could it?

That was the point at which I just quit talking with him.

I don’t know what it is about men’s egos, and why they’re so heavily invested in plumping them up, at the expense of their credibility, their dignity and their chances of making the kind of impression I’m guessing they’re hoping for. But I wish we’d get past this lemme-‘splain-that-to-you-little-lady condescending shite—especially when you’re talking out your ass—because I find that as I grow older I just don’t have the bandwidth for putting up with it.

And I hope to God I don’t end up in a Metro car with my colleague again, because I might be tempted to throw myself under the train. Or him.

Gratitude Monday: friendship...and food

Some years ago I wrote about my friend Chris and the many ways knowing her has enriched my life. While I was back on the West Coast, I only saw Chris a couple of times when she came out to visit family in the East Bay. On one memorable occasion, we met with our mutual friend Amy for lunch in Danville.

Since my return to The District They Call Columbia, we weren’t able to get together in person until I moved out to the Greater Reston-Herndon Metroplex. A couple of months ago she came by and we discussed garden possibilities. (Sadly, it seems probable that—even with the southern exposure—my back yard doesn’t get enough sun to grow tomatoes, which is a massive bummer.)

And we started out 2018 on Saturday by catching up on things and me giving her a tutorial in pie pastry. Then we went out to dinner at a Turkish place. (That choice was an homage to Amy, who I suspect factored into her decisions to stop by my place in the South Bay the fact that it was next to an Afghan restaurant.) It was so lovely to go to a place I’ve had my eye on with a good friend—especially one who, like Amy, really enjoys trying new foods.

(The Turkish food was gorgeous. But there are no photos, because we ate it before I thought about taking any.)

We’ve made a kind of resolution to not let so much time elapse between get-togethers. For one thing, I have a garden to plan, and for another, we need to find an Indian restaurant. Plus—I should check on her pie-making efforts. I’m grateful for all these things, and for a friendship that goes back more than 20 years.