My Various Random Ramblings

Imagine a place where all you have to worry about is nothing. Food appears when you need it. You are surrounded by pleasant company. You have no job, money has no meaning, what you enter with is all you have and will ever have. The weather is beautiful and taken care of, the temperature warm in the day but cool in the night, an endless supply of sunscreen at an arm’s length.

The catch is there is no inside. To stay in this utopia, you must stay on the lot. As long as you do that, you wil be fed, there will be a bathroom, and you will be kept safe. There is no electricity or modern conveniences. For how long would you stay in this utopia without ruining it? At any time, you can go inside, leave the lot and quit. You’ve still got free will. But how long until you try the forbidden fruit out of boredom?

The boy walks into the room and notices the amount of men waiting. They are all happily sitting in chairs, quietly staring into nothing. None of them notice him. He quietly takes a chair in the corner and sits down. Nothing happens. The men around keep staring, their eyes blank, minds blank, senses quiet. Nothing is happening. But then his ears adjust to the quiet. He hears it in the distance. A faint voice. It sounds like a spring day in a meadow, quiet, soft, green, fresh. Unbelivably fresh. It says, just wait, I’ll be right there. He looks around the room. No one else seems to have noticed. Their eyes continue with blank stares, nothing changed. Nothing happened. The boy wonders why he is here, and if it is ever going to happen. He resolves that if all these other men are waiting for it he might as well too. The voice is there again, as faint as before. It says nothing, but is heard. “It’ll talk to me when it is time.” The hum of the environment around him can no longer be noticed. The drip in the air conditioner, gone. It’s a peaceful bliss. He might as well just sit it out, it can’t be much longer and it is so peaceful. Nothing happens. “The voice will come to me, I’ve been told that is what it does.” He sits. And sits, waiting for the sweet voice to come get him.

What he doesn’t notice is no one else has moved. They’ve been there just as long if not longer. What all of them have failed to do is simply walk up to the receptionist and ask if it is their turn. If he did, he’d find that it was ready for him and something would happen.

A what is wrong with my brain moment brought to you by caffeine and a lack of sleep. Hey, with the internet even the most worthless information can and should be shared, right?

A useful life tip

Watching and observing people is one of the simplest forms of learning in this world. Dealing with people themselves on the other hand is one of the most illogical and insane processes on earth. No amount of learning is useful in an indeterministic system where cause and effect don’t act like cause and effect. Predicting the outcome of Schrodinger’s cat is safer than predicting the output of the female species since men don’t have nine lives.

And to be taken light heartily…

When probability is your only friend in a game of cards, you’re playing poker.

What good is knowing the time when you are already late? Stop looking at your watch and run.

Instead of just sitting there and complaining about the problem, tell me what you are going to do about it. This way you can be made fun of later instead of me then complaining about you, raising the net happiness value of the overall situation.

Sometimes I think it would just be easier to just throw my best at my work. I’d happily have someone paid to constantly coaches me and tell me how I can improve and have me work on the skills that need improvement. Instead we are used for the skills that we are already good at, regardless of if there is room for improvement. Part of an athletes job is to sit down and hone their skills, spending hours practicing. Only a small fraction of their time is spent performing but by this point they have neared perfection. In corporate America, all of our time is spent performing with almost no time to practice and only the bare minimum of training. We spend most of our time doing the tasks we are already good at and not expected to learn new skills as part of the normal routine. If I were able to spend half my day coding brand new things in frameworks and languages I had never used, the other half of my day would be more productive and I would probably do a better job since I had spent time building parallel neural pathways. They always said in school practice makes perfect, so why doesn’t that same principle get applied in the real world?

Google gives their employees 20% time to perform mental exercise and  practice and look where they have gone with that. How can you have your employees become athletes?

If you are unhappy with something, fix it.

If you are unhappy with someone, communicate it.

Controlled rants are good, they let you organize your thoughts.

A blog post is often just a controlled rant.

When in a room full of people, you can often learn more by observation than conversation.

Are you a conversation circle floater or commiter?

Stand your ground when confronted until you get a full scope of the situation.

Politics and religion are a great discussion item, but only in small groups.