9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

• @scalzi you should raffle off a chance to play some Portal2 co-op with a lucky winner to benefit Japan Tsunami aid. #

• Required yearly reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe #scalesof10 #

Frustration seems to be the key component of my work life. I know that everyone deals with it at some level, but the issue here is that it has become the main part of what I do. What is really frustrating is that I like to think of myself as a relatively patient person, but overall, it seems that as of late I have hit roadblock after roadblock after roadblock in my current position.

I want to make positive contributions. I want to enable positive change. But instead I am pushed into a corner to watch from a distance, as the change occurs in another part of the country under its own constraints and timelines. I am being ostracized by the very process that is in place in that remote office. They do it to minimize risk, and in the end, I think what they really do is ruin innovation. They spend so much time doing it the way they have always done it, it kills any opportunity to look into doing it different. Because that is just “the way it has been done.”

You can’t succeed at anything if you are too busy looking behind. And likewise, you can’t move forward if all you do is plan and plan and plan. Letting reactive behavior drive change is a horrible idea, as is being so proactive all you do is argue “what ifs”. Being reactive is bad… unless you are a firefighter, then it is probably a good fit. But we are not firefighters, we are specialists in serving content to our users through specific services. Nothing more. Nothing else.

And now the most recent example:

Spending 10 months on planning, specing, and building a new mail system that will be in a non-production environment when it is brought online is just down right confusing. How or why it would take that long is beyond me. What is really confusing is the fact that at the time of the buyout, the company did not decide to take over the entire scope of operations in the first place. Sure it would have been more painful up front, but we would be here five years later in a very different place. Instead we are where we were five years ago, still arguing about the paint colors.

Who cares about the paint? Let’s just get the damn house built first. Without drawing up 600 different plans and discussing if it will be hit by meteors.

• I have the knee of an eighty year old… Dog. What is that in dog years? 560 years? God that is a shit knee in any context. #
• I bet someone out there actually has a 560 year old canine knee sitting on their desk as a fancy paperweight. Archaeologists are morbid. #
• Better than the 1500 year old carved penis fertility idol sitting on the anthropologist's desk, I suppose. Those guys are pervs. #
• Rockies won, bus is full of drunks, and traffic is at an utter stand still. Ahhhhh, Denver. If only you had teleporters at the bus station. #
• I can understand why some never drink and why other drink too much, but I can't understand why it smells so bad. #
• Why does the body insisting on throwing every ounce of bad stuff out of every pore after having a drink or two? #
• Its like the universal balance has to be maintained. If you drink, get confident, your smell drives the opposite sex away. All balances out. #
• You could ask that cute girl for her number, but then again, you smell like the bar room floor. Gag. #

• Hertz counter in san antonio is slower than frozen vomit running uphill. I'm fifth in line, waiting 30 mins so far. Tick tick tock tick. #
• And I told a lady on the plane that I consider myself a patient man. Alanis Morrisette would call it a certain 6 word. #
• At an hour. Thanks hertz. #
• The desk is trying to upsell everything. Fuel, insurance, model, size, features, magical unicorn fairies in the trunk. #
• TRUNK MONKEYS! #