"Motivation gets you started. Habit keeps you going."

The Game Is Fixed

How to ruin a country via big business ideals:

1. Poorly compensate employees who do the ground work to reduce the quality of products and services.

2. Continuously raises the prices of products and services, while cheapening material costs in order to increase profitability.

3. Out source and off shore jobs within the company, further reducing the quality of products and services.

4. Hold monies outside of the country to avoid tax liabilities.

5. When profits decline, cut jobs within the company in order to maintain profitability.

6. Insanely overcompensate employees at the top for a job well done!

7. When profitability declines, cut on overhead, cut more jobs, and right when the bottom is about to give out, sell the company off.

When is iCloud.com going to stop being sub par?

Annoying things about iCloud.com that prevent me from actively using it:

No iMessage. I thought this was one of the main points of having iMessage. Where is it?

Mail doesn’t offer threading of conversations.

Mail doesn’t allow auto-bcc.

Mail doesn’t allow you to setup a filter for messages from your self to be auto-read.

Calendar doesn’t support Facebook events.

Calendar doesn’t support subscribing to a calendar (such as Facebook, or public calendars, like US Holidays).

Notes only offers the marker font. I can’t even look at it.

Why would iWork be the lowest in the hierarchy? For that matter, I should be able to organize the icons myself.

Is any of the above even close to being on the way? I’m tired of ‘mum’s the word,’ which implies, ‘you’ll get it when you get it.’ There’s no point in being quiet about features you are behind on. If the site doesn’t offer a comparable experience to using the products, what is the point?

"In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."

Vengeance

I consider myself to be a pacifist. I do have anger issues, but I don’t run around getting into fist fights or calculated ways of getting back at someone, and I pretty much quit hurling insults in favor of a witty comeback or trying to understand the other person’s perspective. I won’t speak to my efficacy on those fronts, but the Boston Bomber has me thinking.

I am not sad. I want death upon the transgressor.

It’s a horrible thing to think but it was my very first thought. I am tired of this, and tired for the American populace. You see, even though we all know of the horrors that round our world, we tend to compartmentalize them because we do not see them every day. We are Americans, we are supposed to be ahead of the curve by being respectful and tolerant thanks to our concept of and concepts for democracy, and their derivatives thereof. But this is not the case, is it?

Each and every person had a right to live and if you believe that, you automatically subscribe yourself to not having the right to kill. I have to counter that. Everyone has the right to live and the right to kill and it is the circumstances that justify us. The bottom line is - if we believe these things, we shouldn’t see tragic events like this happen, even though we know that dark and dire circumstances have taken place an will continue to do so to have these folks hurt or dead. Permanently disabled - another number the media never states. I want to know how many dead, how many injured, how many permanently so. Not reporting that makes the numbers seem lighter or the event not as shocking.

We need to be shocked. It’s part of our human make up. We ascribe ourselves little thrills and shocks in the absence of predatory existences. So is it a shock I want the Boston Bomber dead? Do I have that right?

It’s a feeling really - that this sort of thing doesn’t happen here. On our ‘soil’. It does. And what does it deserve, other than misinformed media coverage?

BronyCons

If you don’t know what a Brony is, it’s a person who is really into the new My Little Pony cartoon. And yes, there is a new one, if you somehow didn’t know. The creators are baffled by the response from an age range they didn’t intend, which is anyone above 12!

I attended the con in Brooklyn yesterday and helped out a few friends who sell their wares in the artist alley, who also helped me out with a brownie (brownies for Brony con!), and towards the end of the day, when I started tingling, I realized that these are just a bunch of kids that love cute things and want to have fun, and if that means dancing to brostep on a stage with your two best pony cosplay buddies in front of a room of about 16, do your thing, boo boo. Plus, they spend money!!

The encouraging thing to know is that it is their money, if they are old enough to work, and that they are aware of their obsession. It’s kind of a thing now at these cons, with comic cons and anime cons. It’s a culture of collection and consumption. There was even a printed Boromir meme on the door of the entry to the artist’s alley that said, “One does not simply spend too much on pony merch.” It wasn’t that funny, but hey, I got a kick out of it.

And you know, if I didn’t come through, I would have never picked up some sweet Magic the Gathering mana symbol pins. One of each of the five colors! And slightly paled, after the style of the original sets. Now that’s nerderific, and for $5 and the potential personal embarrassment upon their use, totally worth it. I spent thousands on a lot of essentially worthless waxed paper with drawings of intense situations or creatures.

Best moments of the day: walking to a another hotel nearby that was offering a rare foil card with attendance; watching a giant nerd child in front of me spin a wheel to get nothing; myself going next, not knowing a thing about ponies or even the name of the pony on the foil card; and winning just the box he wanted. Watching his reaction told me that he’s just the right age for that kind of experience.

The new iPod touch has a way cooler design than the iPhone 5.

Park Ranger

A thought on my way to work, riding an escalator going up: If I were to fuck this up, where would I end up? What would I do next?

If you must know, I work in an office. It’s a strange thing to be part of the white collar workforce. It’s probably an outdated term, but I don’t know what else to call it, and I don’t care to look into it. Could be that young people like me want to better a term that still works but makes them feel stuffy. It’s strange because it seems to me to be something humanity was not built for. I am sure there are studies to support that, but I am lucky in that I can at least apply my creative thinking skills to solve problems and generate new ideas, rather than be a well dressed, walking, talking algorithm that files and denies things, or has a defined workflow and never works outside of that. Who the hell are those people in HR? Talk to me about the crazy weather again!

But this is my career I was talking to myself about. Where would I end up if I really made a mess of things? My personality tends to brighten at the thought of the extreme opposite - which in that moment, was Park Ranger.

My thoughts:

You’re outside all day.

I don’t have outdoor allergies.

Yes, it’s going to be a day out, no matter if it is cold or hot outside (I imagine - I don’t expect to sit in a little office to myself).

There are bears and other wild animals, but I could challenge myself to know when they are around and never actually encounter a dangerous one. That’s what smart people do.

I have all that time to just scout about, help people, maintain the park and think about abstract things that will always be safe from reality.

I am city kid, so the transition would be tough, but I do love taking to the outdoors whenever I have the chance. There’s also a reality to the outdoors, which is there’s no going indoors for a day when you’re on the job. But that’s all I wish to do on a day off anyway, might as well make adventure a part of the daily grind. Make some Native American friends to drink and smoke with.

Tight!