16December2008
Posted by Toner under: music.
Every holiday season, radio stations everywhere begin the ritual of dusting off the same eleven Christmas albums and proceed playing them ad-nauseum in celebration of the birth of baby Jesus.
One song I really have issue with is the Band-aid classic “Do they know it’s Christmas.”
Lets look at the lyrics shall we?
It’s Christmas time, and there’s no need to be afraid
At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time
Okay, benign enough…
But say a prayer and pray for the other ones
At Christmas time, it’s hard, but when your having fun
Gotcha, take a moment out of our busy day and think about others. That’s nice.
There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
And the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Whoa, that’s a little Edgar Allan Poe, but, um okay…
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you
Wow, now that’s just mean. Really?
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time
Well, considering that half the continent is the fricken Sahara Desert, I’m gonna harbor a guess that snow, in general, is not a big concern.
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
I don’t know about you, but, I think life is a pretty damm good gift. I mean, if I had to choose, between say, giving up my Wii Fit or um, dying, I’m probably going to be okay without the gift.
Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow
Okay, I mean, that’s just wrong. Do the words, world’s largest fricken waterfall mean nothing?
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?
Considering half of Africa is Muslim, I’m guessing they don’t get all that worked up about Christmas.
24July2008
Posted by Toner under: Life and Family.
A few of my friends are about to, in the next few months (and in one case hours) become parents for the first time. Because of this, I wanted to put together a little helpful guide for you new dads out there. I hope this helps.
May God have mercy on your souls.
1. Everyone will have advice on what you are doing with your kids (from diapering to dealing with illness, behavior issues, etc.). 99% of this will be crap. Each kid is different. You’re going to have to find what works best for you… I guess that means you can stop reading now.
2. Your newborn will most likely get sick… A LOT… Your first response will always be the worse case scenario (maybe it’s ebola?).
To make matters worse, most pediatricians live by a simple rule, “fat, pink and healthy.” Put simply, if the baby is eating, peeing, pooping, and sleeping (at least a little) they are not going to be at all as concerned about your problem as you are. This will be very frustrating.
a. At some point, you’ll have to trust your doctor. They do this kind of stuff, all day.
b. That said, if your problem seems really bad, you might want to do a little research on your own, and don’t be afraid to suggest a treatment option. For example, we would have never known my son had allergies/asthma unless I asked “should we take him to an allergist?”
c. Daycare is a little like when Europeans first came in contact with North Americans (without all the violence hopefully). The little immune systems can’t handle all the new germs. Be prepared for some bumpy nights. It gets easier as they get used to being around other people.
3. Until your kid gets daytime and nighttime all sorted out, and takes on enough weight, you’re not going to really sleep much during the night. Maybe three/four months minimum. Keep in mind RAF pilots during the battle of Britain jumped into airplanes and fought the Nazis on as little as 10 minutes sleep a night. Also keep in mind Britain lost around 1700 planes and about 600 pilots. Ouch.
4. When the baby sleeps. You sleep. Your little bundle of joy will do stuff like sleep from 2 in the afternoon till 8 at night. And you might think, “Woohoo! Six hours to play Xbox.” Well, guess who’s going to be up from 8 till six the next day…
5. From this point on, nothing you do for your wife is as important as taking care of the kid(s). Let’s say you are both home from work. You paint the house, build a nursery and pave the driveway. Your wife is inside, watching the kids. When you both go to bed that night, she will look at you like “wussy.”
a. If you are not the primary caregiver, no amount of time you spend with the kids will justify you being tired from watching the kids. So, say your wife is a stay at home mom and goes away for a week and you think you’re being a great dad and husband for watching the kids while she’s gone. Her reply on return will be something like “What? You only had them a week. I do it everyday.”
6. At some point, you will volunteer to stay home with your baby so your wife can get a night out. On this night your child will cry as it has never cried before. You will invariably call your wife and ask her to come home. It’s okay. It happens. Afterwards you will think of a thousand things you could of tried to making the crying stop that you didn’t.
7. Be stupid. Babies like stupid. They are much more Benny Hill than Monty Python.
8. There’s a chance, that in the hospital, a nurse may ask you “do you want me to put the baby in the nursery so you guys can get some sleep?” The correct answer is yes. You have the rest of your lives to be together. Right now you’re tired.
9. There’s going to be a room in your house (probably where the TV is) that is going to be the main area where you keep the baby (until it starts crawling around and such). You may not leave this room for three months.
10. It is going to be really hard.
a. By the time they are 3 you won’t remember what any of this newborn stuff was like. The human brain has amazing capability to block out misery.
b. The first time they smile, say your name, catch a ball, any of that, you’ll know it’s absolutely worth it. That sounds like a line I’m sure, but trust me, it’s great. You’re still going to be f’n exhausted. But, it’s at least good to know you’re doing good work.
Good luck!
Last, super-secret tip
So, now that you’ve spawned. You’ve gained admittance to the super-secret club of parents. What this means is this… Remember all those people who used to tell you (before you had kids) how awesome it was to be a parent? Well, now they are going to unload on you horror stories of biblical proportions… For example you might say “little Johnny had a cold.” To which they will reply, “Oh that’s nothing, our son barfed out his own spleen… seven times…”
And you might think, why didn’t anyone tell you this stuff could happen BEFORE YOU HAD KIDS??? And of course, the answer, is Darwinism.
16July2008
Posted by Toner under: Nerd Culture; UX; business.
A while back I know I (and loads of other people) made a lot of assumptions about Gen Y and technology.
As Gen Xers with our i-phones, our RSS readers and our blogs I think we thought it a given that the next generation of professionals would assuredly be some sort of creature from the sci-fi shows we grew up on (just look at those awful headsets we wear). Just wired into the hive mind, multi-tasking like mad, using the power of the world at their fingertips to do things we, at their age, never had an opportunity to do.
And because of this, we in turn, spent a lot of time convincing people older than us how much things are going to change in a few years and how we better get ready. The slow are eaten! Up with the early adopters!!!!
Confirming these assumptions were loads of reports by reputable researchers like Pew, that spoke of how much time teens and tweens spent online. We pointed to the success of social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook and somehow made the correlation that because little Ian made a Guitar Hero-themed Myspace page, this meant that when he was CEO of Big Company.com (at the age of 20 of course) he would run his meetings not with minutes and agendas but with color-coded strips that matched the beats of Aerosmith songs. Whoa, the world was gonna change!
But recently I’m starting to change my mind. Let’s look at two bullet points that are fairly common faire in any “web 2.0/Gen Y” presentation these days.
- Digital Natives thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.
- They prefer games to “serious” work.
Okay, so, let’s really think about this. I’m in my late thirties, and honestly, if I didn’t have a mortgage, a toddler that eats like linebacker and another baby on the way, you bet your ass I’d be home playing Oblivion all day and making bad original music on Garage Band. I mean who wouldn’t?
How about the amazing stats about multi-tasking? These kids are doing homework AND chatting at the same time. Breathtaking right?
Well, I can think back to days of homework and I’m fairly sure I had the phone cradled between my shoulder and ear while I got my way through the drudgery of High School algebra. I mean, hell, I bet my dad did it in the 50s as well. Who didn’t? So now maybe it’s typing over talking. Big deal.
So, the real eye opener for me has been some recent conversations with young people. interns, new employees, etc.
Of course this isn’t formal research in the Gallop sense of the word, but, enough of a sample (30+ people maybe?) that my beliefs about this new “wired” world are changing.
When I talk to 20-somethings about technology and work, they are really not that different than, well, the rest of us. Just the other day my boss and I did a little meet and greet with the Interns here and did some informal polling about how they consumed information/news, work behaviors and sort of general technology use.
For the most part, nearly all of them read the paper. Yup, paper. Tactile, made from trees. No one had a start page with a hundred RSS feeds, actually, for that matter; no one even used one of those aggregator-type start pages (igoogle, netvibes, etc.). By the looks on their faces I don’t think many of them knew what to make of that concept.
Of course everyone had a facebook page, but, really, how different is that than the activities we engaged in at their age? If you totaled up the time I spent hanging up fliers for various bands I was in or going on about causes I supported, I’m sure it equaled the amount of time little Johnny is spending sending virtual pokes to his buddies.
Sure the audience is larger, (potentially-in most cases it’s not) but as of yet, how many people have really managed to change the industry because of a YouTube Video or a spot on Last FM? For the most part what we see is kids being kids, just with better toys than what we had (unless you count Tia Tequila - I guess-sort of).
Lets face it, for the most part, people are using social networking for, well, social stuff. And social stuff is fun! Of course people spend a lot of time doing it. It’s like the Eddie Izzard joke about asking someone if you’d rather have a piece of cake or get poked in the eye with a paper-clip.
In matters of work, we immediately expected to hear everyone was using collaboration tools like Twine or Wikki’s but again, not so much. We expected study groups to have evolved into this online, extravaganza of meta-data and collaboration using all the latest and greatest, but again, people told us they used books, maybe the library computer if they were stuck.
I have a hunch, kids being kids and all, that just like how my father working in a factory made me not want to work in a factory, seeing us walk around with our stupid headsets and our smart phones and working Sunday night at 10pm when we should be eating popcorn and watching a movie, is, if anything, making kids more likely to want to want to slow down, turn off the machines and maybe go outside.
I hear it’s nice outside…
8July2008
Posted by Toner under: Life and Family.
If you add up time spent dating, living together, engagement and marriage, my wife and I have been together about ten years now.
I think we know each other pretty well.
Over the weekend, I was helping her hang some curtains up that we just got back from the dry cleaners.
Now, to clarify, in this particular room, we have “curtains” which are, ya know, curtains, and then we have something called “sheers” which are like these white strips of material that go in-between the curtains.
As we are putting the first set back up, my wife says, “We usually have two curtains and three sheers on each rod, do you think we should just change and do two and two?”
Of course I ask “why?”
And she says “no reason just asking.”
This perplexes me. Now, follow me here. As a man, if I give someone options there’s usually a reason. A pro/con perhaps. For example…
“Bob, do you want tequila or beer?” Essentially, I’m asking, “do you want to get drunk out of our minds or do you just want to chill, have a beer and watch the ballgame…” There are two clear options.
This leads me to believe, my wife, being a rational, intelligent woman, probably had some motive behind the question, but, what this motive is, will remain forever unknown to me for no reason I can figure out… i mean, was one answer better than another? I dunno…
Creepy man.
4July2008
Posted by Toner under: history.
As a history major working in technology, I don’t get to use my degree much… so considering the day, here’s my little indulgence… It’s one of my favorite bits of American history…
At Fort Stanwix, during the Revolutionary War (that’s the one where we beat Britain and celebrate today by drinking beer and blowing up illegal fireworks), there was a bit of a standoff between the British and Americans.
The British, hoping to scare the American garrison into surrendering, rounded up a bunch of local Indians (the “come to our Casino” kind, not the “is the computer plugged in sir?” kind…) and threatened the American commander (in a round-about, rambling way, so typical of our friends across the pond) that if he did not surrender he could not be responsible for what the Indians in his command did to the “old, infirm and women and children” in the fort. See back then, you had to take your family to war with you. Good times right?
So, the Americans invited the British, under flag of truce, into the fort to discuss this.
An American colonel at the scene, Marinus Willet, after listening to the British officer ramble for a good 20 minutes or so, unloaded on his “guests” saying:
“Do I understand you sir? I think you say that you come from a British colonel… and by your uniform you appear to be an officer in the British service.
You have made a long speech… which, striped of all it’s superfluities, amounts to this, that you come… to the commandant of this garrison to tell him that if he does not deliver up the garrison into the hands of your colonel, he will send his Indians to murder our woman and children.
You will please reflect sir, that then their blood will be on your head, not ours. We are doing our duty to our country. This garrison is committed to our charge, and we will take care of it.
After you get out of it, you may turn around and look at it’s outside, but never expect to come in again, unless you come as a prisoner. I consider the message you brought a degrading one for a British officer and a citizen of his majesty’s empire, to carry.
For my own part, I declare before you that before I would consent to deliver the garrison to such a murdering set as your army…I would suffer my body be filled with splinters and set on fire, as you know has at times been practiced by such hordes of the women and children killers as belong to your army. You may leave my fort sir.”
Balls man. Balls.
Have a good fourth, and ya know, spend a little time, between meat and beer and random explosions, to think about how we all got here.