Entries Tagged 'Casual Friday' ↓

I occasionally use this blog to write about non-professional topics.  I confine these posts to “Casual” Friday.

I recently was reminded of a Rush song from 1981 called The Camera Eye.  It’s an interesting song because it’s the last song the band wrote which is longer than ten minutes, and it hasn’t been performed live in concert in over 25 years (so was “retired” from concert play only two years after its release).  As such it has a special place in the heart of hardcore Rush fans (ahem).

I was thinking of the song at work and realized I wanted to hear it.  I loaded up my media player, typed “Camera” into the search box, and picked which version of the song I wanted to hear (the studio version, or a bootleg recording from the Chicago Amphitheater, from March 1981).  I picked the bootleg version, the song began, and I smiled as I went about my afternoon work.

There are a few things which are completely astounding about this experience, which I realize I take for granted.

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(I occasionally use this blog to talk about non-professional topics.  I confine these posts to Fridays, hence the term ).

This summer, I was re-introduced to the hobby of geocaching.  I had read about geocaching many times over the years, but nobody I knew had gotten into it, so I ignored it.  When a few family members started getting into it, I took another look.

First off, for those unfamiliar with the hobby, geocaching is basically a game in which participants retrieve coordinates and/or hints from a common web site, travel to those coordinates using GPS receivers (GPSr), and find “caches” hidden by other players of the game.  Upon finding the cache, finders sign a logbook and report their success.  Caches are hidden on urban street corners and mountain peaks, and everything in-between.

So what makes this hobby fun for geeks like me?  A few things….

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Rather than try to tie a casual topic into my corporate blog this week, I’m just diving in with an Internet meme I was first exposed to on Stu’s blog.  The challenge — list your favorite album (not necessarily the objectively best album) for every year you’ve been alive, with no repeated artists (this last rule complicates quite a few things!).  I also refused to use live albums, greatest hits, or to list ties (sorry Stuart).  It was much more difficult than I thought.

It certainly made me aware how much music I’ve listened to at different points in my life.

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(It’s no secret to you that I am a geek, but today’s post is really going to push the boundaries.  I apologize in advance for losing my less-geeky readers.  Come back, I promise I’m not always like this.)

Today I’m going to share some life skills lessons I learned from James T. Kirk and Magic: The Gathering.  Yes, really.
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When I was in High School, I had a wonderful English teacher (Jane Nagle, now a professor at Westfield State College).  I remember an exercise we did where she asked each of us to write down how much cash we thought we had in our pockets, and then to check if we were right.  Most of us knew exactly how much money we had — we weren’t exactly in an affluent area, and the idea of just having “some money” and not budgeting it strictly was pretty alien to most of us.

I look at my wallet now, and it makes a great symbol for how much life has changed since then.  And I don’t mean how much cash is in it.

Change is inevitable and exciting.  If you had told my 16 year-old self what my 35 year-old self would have in his wallet, he would have called you crazy.

Cash.  Yes, I still carry cash.  I have this odd behavior where I hate to spend less than $5-ish on a credit card.  This means I usually pay for my breakfast in cash, and my lunch on a credit card.  Don’t ask; I don’t understand either.  And yes, the fact that I’d be willing to spend this much money just to avoid brown-bagging it would seem alien to my teenage self, but let’s not go into that.

Credit.  The willingness of banks in this country to hand out credit is something I would never have predicted in 1990.  I shudder to think of how much damage I could do to my life in a crazed shopping spree using just the plastic in my wallet.

Driver’s License.  No, I wasn’t driving in high school.  But that’s not it.  My first license had my social security number on it.  Everybody’s did.  Now you can’t, even if you want to, use that as your license number.  I would never have imagined the privacy concerns this technology boom would bring.

Health Insurance Cards (3).  Teenagers are immortal, right?  Why would you carry those things around with you?  I mean, when would you ever need that?  Hah.  Not only that, why would I need 3 different insurance providers?  (Now that I wish I could fix!)

Audio Meeting Quick Reference Card.  I carry in my wallet a card with phone and access numbers to a conference call I can use at any time.  Included is of course access numbers from other countries.  I don’t think my 1990 self could imagine why I’d be carrying a card with a phone number in India on it.

Employment Badge.  The only reason I’d have carried one of these around at 16 would be to get my employee discount on audio tapes at Caldor.  I certainly would have trouble picturing myself doing what I do for a living today, for who I do it today.

Corporate Credit Card.  Again, I hesitate to ponder the damage I could do to my life if I ever snapped :).

AAA Card.  Ok, this one I could have pictured.  Our cars were always breaking down, back then.  I feel like I pay into AAA now strictly due to the terror I underwent back in those days every time the car I was in broke down, got stuck, wouldn’t start, and so on.

So … what’s in your wallet?

I’ve got good news and bad news. First, you may soon see a drop in activity on this site.  (Wait, wait, that’s the bad news, not the good news, stop cheering!)

The good news is that it’s because we’re due to have our first child in two weeks.

When this happens, I’ll be taking a couple weeks away from work to concentrate on being home with my family.  Given the circumstances, I may not have a lot to say that fits into this blog (then again, maybe I’ll be up all night and resort to blogging to pass the time ).

Even after this, my blogging schedule will likely change.  I plan to continue regular updates, but you will probably not see new posts every work day.  No promises I can’t keep, remember?  So I promise to update regularly.  I hope that’s good enough.

Have a great weekend everyone.

You may ask yourself: What does Dave read each week?

Or not.  Either way, here’s your chance to find out.  This week, I made an effort to take note of interesting stories I stumbled across in my RSS reader.  The result fills up my Casual Friday post nicely this week!  Hope you enjoy something here.

• Wish you could use Google Earth in your browser?  Now you can.
• NASA blogger suspended.  Not as controversial as it sounds.
• NYC DOE employees told not to blog (and this one is a bit more controversial).
• The consumerist shares a funny story about trying to order the discontinued hamburger value meal at McDs.
• Weblogged talks about kids and oversharing online.
• Dr. Ari Juels at RSA says to rethink password expiration (and I agree).
• Some images from EMC World 2008.
• Comparing the size of the mobile internet to other types of media worldwide.
• Marginal Revolution gives a shoutout to Murakami, only Japanese novelist I’ve read.
• DD-WRT update on Lifehacker (still haven’t updated).
• Insulting Einstein?  Not really.
• Storage Anarchist’s EMC World wrapup.
• The challenges of corporate blogging.
• Designing for Evil.
• Glimpses of what The Road might look like (still haven’t read this).
• Euler, the first 101-word short story that made me laugh aloud.
• We did this! Sorry, I’m a closet rocket science fan.
• Hobbit movie chat highlights.
• Chuck Hollis on social media in enterprise.

Where would we be without RSS readers?  I have trouble remembering what that world was like.

See you Monday!

I’d write a real summary of Day Four, but it was honestly more of the same, plus travel. Not a very exciting blog post, and doesn’t really fit my Casual Friday theme. So instead, I’ve put together my own list of things I learned at EMC World.

Everything I need to know, I learned in Las Vegas

• You should describe your technology in terms of words which make people laugh at how they sound (see: fungible). Continue reading →

had a different Casual Friday post all ready to go, but decided at the last minute that I should keep with the EMC World theme and do something Vegas-themed instead.

So, for today’s Casual Friday, I’m going to put you in the mood for a trip to Las Vegas with my five favorite Vegas movies. I know there are “better” Vegas movies out there than these, but these are my favorite five (in no particular order). Feel free to throw your two cents worth in the comments!
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Lots of people dress down on Fridays, and while I tend to be pretty dressed-down at work every day, I dress down my blog on Friday instead. Today, I want to talk about vacation!

photo credit: Christina Welsh (Rin)

Remember yesterday’s post, about the blurring line between my “work” and “home” selves? Well, nowhere is that line more concrete than when on vacation. Vacation is my time (or, more fairly, my family time). I’m a bit extreme in this regard in that not only won’t I check my email, I generally won’t even watch the news or read the paper.

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