Category: Work


  • In work chats, I love that someone will put a thumbs up on a message rather than respond. I will hover over it to see who acknowledged it. To me it means, “what was communicated is complete. No questions. No additional feedback.” Probably it just means, “I accept this, but don’t want to drag this…

  • Need to add to my LinkedIn something like “company storyteller.” There are individuals in the organization I know to ask the story about why we do what we do. Why do we have this firewall rule not not another? Why are we super strict about this thing but not another? I know many of these…

  • A world without work

    The funny thing about being a technocrat is the goal is to end my work. Create solutions for everything, but in a true Moving The Goal Post situation. As soon as one has crafted the solution, there are improvements needed. As soon as it is perfect, there are new business processes and objectives. And then…

  • Semantic Drain and the Meaninglessness of Modern Work makes an interesting point that a problem with knowledge management work is that much of is filler work without a fulfilling purpose. I was far more stressed as the university webmaster than as a database administrator. The webmaster job was highly subjective with people getting upset about…

  • A sound is a terrible way to get my attention. I mostly live in some kind of background noise. So, there is a strong possibility that I will miss a notification through listening to music or podcasts. Worse, even if I do hear it, I have no clue what weird thing is trying to get…

  • This guy won the Internet for a while. “I love learning the words that their generation comes up with — both the unique ones as well as the ones where they take an existing word and give it a completely different meaning.” One of my favorite web sites is Urban Dictionary because people apply new…

  • Geeking out for me takes the form of the explainer. I take what someone knows about something and describe how it works and why I find it interesting. My reading takes me all over the place, but I particularly of late enjoy nonfiction on interesting topics. People find my reading about things like quantum mechanics…

  • WaPo published Trump’s transcript from a recent interview with the AP. This exchange caught my eye. AP: Did they give you any sense of the timetable? Trump: I would say within a week. That’s my impression. He said two weeks. But they’re going to try and do it in less than a week. An instructor…

  • Hurricane Michael leveled much of Mexico Beach, which is a place I know pretty well. Spread out over my lifetime, but a rough impression is, I think, I have spent about half a year at this particular town. That would rank it third longest of places where I have lived. Several people have expressed surprise…