Category: play through

You Do What, Now?

My very truly honestly global job certainly keeps me on my toes from one day to the next, calculating time zones with ease and panache.

The laws that govern each country are different and there are nuances in languages that keep my brain working overtime.

This is never more apparent than in the weekly catch up meetings I have with my boss, who is located in London.

My boss has a sense of humor about to the level of mine, so lately we have this ongoing riff.

It goes something like this:

Boss: “So, what is this, um, let’s see what do they call it…yes, this day of groundhog you people celebrate in the US?”

Me: “What, they don’t have this holiday in the UK?”

Boss: “I don’t think so, what is this all about?”

Me: “So, wait, you’re telling me that in the UK they don’t pull rodents out of the ground in order to determine the extent of winter?”

Boss: “Not as such, no.”

Our conversation usually revolves around some odd thing that “you people do in your country.”

To be fair, I catch the brunt of this. You never know how weird you are until you see your own culture through another’s eyes.

Things like:

Boss: “So I’m going to be in the US the week of March 14th. I understand I’ll be able to participate in what you Americans refer to as St. Patrick’s Day.”

Me: “Oh c’mon, any holiday that involves drinking a lot of beer can’t be so bad.”

Boss: “Well, true.”

Or

Boss: “Did you watch this thing you Americans call the ‘Super Bowl’ this weekend?”

Me: “Yes, I did.”

Boss: “So, did the team you were rooting for win?”

Me: “Well, I wasn’t really rooting for one of the teams, so it didn’t matter.”

Boss: “Oh…so what did you do then? Did you attend a party?

Me: “Yes, I went to a friend’s house. We did what we Americans are fond of doing, we ate a lot.”

Boss: “Your people seem to like that.” (<- my boss attended his first American Thanksgiving meal this year and was horrified by how much food was presented.) My return vollies tend to be more along the lines of his use of language. Me: "So if we can crack on, is it possible to crack off?" Boss: --silence-- "I've never really thought about that." Or Me: "So you need to know when you say 'creating an implementation scheme', that the word scheme has a bit of a negative connotation for Americans." Boss: "How do you mean?" Me: "Well, setting up a scheme usually involves something illegal or at least questionable." Boss: "Oh! My. Well we won't use that anymore will we?" Or Me: "When you told me to revert on your email, I have no idea what you mean." Boss: "You mean my question?" Me: "No, I mean...the word revert means going back to a previous version. I don't understand how I can go back to a previous version of an email you wrote. It makes no sense!" Boss: --sigh-- "You click reply and answer my question!" Me: "Oh. I get it. That's a weird use of the word revert." Or, my personal favorite... Boss: "So to let you know, the UK office will be on holiday Monday." Me: "What!? Another holiday?" Boss: "Yes, this is a Bank Holiday and all will have the day." Me: "Don’t you get like five weeks vacation, too?" Boss: "Yes." Me: "When do you people find any time to work over there! Geez!" So yeah, US and UK relations continue to involve a lot of sarcasm. Good thing I'm good at that. Though the best part is when we have to chat about our counterparts in Canada, because that's when we're on the same side. We can both usually find some good reason to pick on the Canadians. (Aw Canada, ya know I love ya! You're like that pesky yet precocious kid brother who says adorable things like "aboot".)






Photo by Scott Duhamel and found on Flickr.

Here’s Comes The Sun, doot n doot doot

Yesterday I had an appointment with the ol’ primary care doc, a follow up from my physical a month ago. Seems the kind doctor wanted to talk about my bloodwork.

Um, ok.

So she scrolls through the results of my blood work, tells me all looks pretty good except one thing.

Vitamin D.

The normal range is 30 to 100 thingamabobbers (I’m sure that’s the official medical term) and they like you to be about 50-60 thingamabobbers on a daily basis.

My score on this exam was 15 thingamabobbers. So yeah, I failed the test.

I knew that low vitamin D was a big deal, been reading about it more and more in the news, but I never figured this was a problem I’d have.

Well, doctor lady scared the crap out of me about my lack of thingamabobbers. Joint aches, insomnia, bad memory and osteoporosis are all side effects of low vitamin D.

Then the doctor lady looked at past blood work and noted that I’ve had a low thingamabobber count for two years.

This is where my 5’3″ doctor lady got mad. Real mad.

First she thought I’d been under her care and hadn’t taken her advice. She looked further and saw that I was under the care of another doctor in the same HMO when I got those other low readings.

That other doctor came along when my longtime primary care doctor retired. I never liked that new doc. I thought she was distracted and not very involved in my care. She was the doctor who told me to simply suck it up when I broke my little finger, and that was the final straw. I found a new doctor, the nice lady I have now.

“I cannot believe that other doctor didn’t do anything about this!” she ranted. There were some other under the breath mumblings and admonitions about “your bones are important!” and “you have osteoporosis in your family!”

Then she put me on a mega dose of vitamin D and ordered me to go outside more.

Me, the kid from the desert. The one who loves sunny days.

Also…the kid working twelve-hour days at work.

So you know, things change. Time to reacquaint myself with El Sol.

Hmm, it’s getting near lunchtime. Sorry boss, I need to go eat lunch outside today. Doctor’s orders!







Image found here.


I’m So Pulling out my Textbooks

Back in 1890, they passed into law this little ol’ thing called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

From the wiki: “The purpose of the act was to oppose the combination of entities that could potentially harm competition, such as monopolies or cartels.”

Yes, this is a good thing. Boon to a free economy and such.

Well I’m ready to invoke that act on a little institution known as Getty Images.

If you look around the web and you see an image you like, look closer…odds are Getty already owns it. And don’t both trying to “borrow” it, Getty wants their money and they want it bad.

Oh, and they are large enough to bring a whole passel of lawyers along for the ride.

Getty owns most shots from any professional sporting event. Getty owns the photos of most individual players too.

Getty has hoovered up many of the great images on Flickr, too. In many cases, photographers *gladly* gave over rights to their photos in hopes of making a little money or at least getting a little exposure.

Understandable, but I don’t have to like it.

Ever visited iStockPhoto, a place where you can find a lot of for-pay great stock images? Getty.

And now, oh now, my fave royalty free photo site, stock.xchng is under new management.

You guessed it, Getty has booted the original team (ok, they probably received a nice sum for their time and trouble) and is now in charge.

I’ll betcha some cold hard cash that many of these formerly free images will no longer be free. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that stock.xchng will soon be blended entirely into iStockPhoto and s’long high quality royalty free photos.

This make Hulk maaaad.

I’m just a little personal blog. I don’t make big ad bucks. I make no bucks from my blog. I do it for the satisfaction. And oh so sorry, can’t pay for high quality photos with just my sense of satisfaction.

Bah!

Photo below, found by searching “greedy” on stock.xchng.








Photo by Svilen Milev and used royalty free (for the time being) from stock.xchng.


Physics by way of the cable company

From a whipping-up-anxiety article in Time magazine titled “Will the Earth Have Two Suns by 2012?”

Regarding Betelgeuse, a rapidly collapsing red super-giant star:


“It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up,” Carter said. “We’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time…and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

And while the celestial event could take place before the end of 2012, it may not occur for a million years.


Emphasis added by me.

Sooo, it could happen in a year or a million years. Trifle hard to plan provisions for that million year stretch. What’s the half-life on my water container?

It’s only January of 2011 and I’m seriously DONE with the doomsday predictions.

Meanwhile, a star that explodes and lights up the Earth for a few weeks then fades away? That’s pretty damn cool. I kind of hope it happens by 2012.



Source.

An Ode To The Shortest Month

Yesterday, in the midst of the weirdness and woe, there was also something magical to note.

After severe rainstorms and plenty of freezing weather, Monday was this clear, sunny, warm, beautiful day.

It was, I think, a hint of what’s to come: February.

Yes, I said February.

The second month of the year. The shortest month of the year. February is a beautiful month.

In February, winter is not quite over, but spring is not quite here. In February we start to see the brilliant yellow of blooming daffodils against the monochrome hue of stormy skies. Daffodils are the harbinger of warm sunny days to come. They gives the cold body hope.

I believe the daffodils and tulips and the snowfall of Cherry Blossoms in February are meant to keep us going like the carrot at the end of the stick. The “something wonderful just around the bend” that help the human soul stay willing to endure the cold and damp days that are yet to be endured.

In February, Punxsutawney Phil pokes his burrowing animal’s head out of the ground and lets us know the score. The planning can begin.

The ground begins to thaw. Birds start to think about coming back this way. There is hope.

Heck, February is also the birth month of at least three of my favorite people (wait, four! Just thought of another).

I appreciate we’re still a good two weeks away from February, but I’m looking toward the second month of the year with a secret anticipation.

In other words…I’m flat tired of winter.

But it’s more poetic to speak of daffodils and warm days.






**Footnote: I purposefully ignored the “holiday” in February. I’m grateful to celebrate every day with my beloved, I don’t need a certain day set aside.


Photo by Andrea Kratzenberg and used royalty free from stock.xchng.