Wednesday, August 28, 2002

The Aging Process by George Carlin Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions: "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six an half. You're four and a half, going on five. That's the key. You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're 'gonna' be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. YOU BECOME 21 . . . YESSSS!!! But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED, we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed? You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone. But wait, you MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would! So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. My grandmother won't even buy green bananas! It's an investment, you know, and maybe a bad one!! And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I was JUST 92." Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100-and-a-half!" May you all make it (healthy and blessed) to 100 and 100 and a half. 6:25:53 PM       Publishing is not dead While I respect Ray Ozzie's creativity and intelligence, I disagree with his, hopefully temporal, view that publishing is dead.  This is why: Technology will take at least 40 more years to reach the level of availability and convenience necessary to kill off publishing: 10 years to emerge and mature, another 10 years to be cheap and convenient enough, and 20 years of deathwatch (old habits die hard).  Rising cost of paper will obviously become a major fudge factor. There is no clear business model for weblog-based journalism.  Paying for something you can hold in your hand is a no brainer, paying for a view is more difficult to sell.  Paying for two hours of sharable entertainment via Pay-per-View is also different from paying pennies per weblog articles for casual reading.  Likely only top 1% of commercial weblogs will be profitable, leaving the rest to be simply 'emotionally rewarding'. Technology and the practice of weblogs are still in their infancy.  There are so much yet to be invented particularly in collaboration and security areas.  Most of blogging phenomenon is due to group dynamics and not technology which is actually pretty thin bridge of convenience. [Don Park's Blog] 5:45:03 PM       Jeff Raskin. "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." 12:51:18 PM       Franklin D. Roosevelt. "When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." 12:43:29 PM       PUBLISHING IS DEAD. Gone, a relic of the past, dead as a doornail, breathless, buried. According to police reports, one-way publishing was killed off by a technology - Weblogs - that have reshaped journalism forever. According to observers, there was formerly but a single effective way to get messages out to an audience - through major mass-market publications that possessed exclusive control of the final form of those messages. "Add Weblogs to that mix", one highly-respected and influential journalist recently wrote, and an entire industry's "world view was shaken". Indeed.  [Ray Ozzie's Weblog] 12:37:02 PM       Fables of Bidpai, circa 750. "He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses." Italian Proverb. "If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot." 12:02:32 PM       BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible. SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of  noise, craps all over everything, and then leaves. IRRITAINMENT - Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. Simpson trials were a prime example. FLIGHT RISK - Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave the company or department soon. 404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404-URL Not Found," meaning that the requested web page could not be located. Used as in: "Don't bother asking him...he's 404 man!" GENERICA - Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivision. Used as in: "We were so lost in Generica, that I forgot what city we were in!" OHNO-SECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a REAL BIG mistake. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. UMFRIEND - A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in, "This is Dylan, my...um...um...friend." BODY NAZI - Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively. CUBE FARM - An office filled with cubicles. IDEA HAMSTERS - People who always seem to have their idea generators running. MOUSE POTATO - The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato. PRAIRIE DOGGING - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. SITCOMS - What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for "Single Income, Two Children, and an Oppressive Mortgage." STRESS PUPPY - A person who seem's to thrive on being stressed out and whiny. ALPHA GEEK - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. G.O.O.D. JOB - a "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well-paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit just as soon as they are solvent again. 8:10:38 AM       Positive Side of Life Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun every year. How long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're on. Birthdays are good for you; the more you have, the longer you live. Happiness comes through doors you didn't even know you left open. If Walmart is lowering prices every day, how come nothing is free yet? Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once. Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened. We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors....but they all exist very nicely in the same box. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour. 8:06:16 AM

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