“The Right Thing”

I want to see a satire movie made called “The Right Thing” where it is a seriesof short segments in which people do the right thing, instead of the dumb thing that puts them into ridiculous movie situations.

Scenario A: Friend shows signs of turning  into a zombie.
Kill the friend.
Done.

Scenario B: Dude wrecks a car.
Dude fesses up, works hard to pay for repairs.
Done.

Scenario C: Dude’s girlfriend goes away on a family vacation to Europe, meanwhile sexy-hot slutty McNeighbor girl offers dude her “services”.
Dude turns her down, buys some dirty magazines, waits till the end of the week.
Done.

Scenario D: A prison-convict has intel needed to evade terrorist attack.
Do not move, or set said inmate free to “help” the SWAT team out.
Done.

Scenario E: Dude works for a bad boss
Dude quits job gets better job
Done.

Scenario F: Dude works for a corrupt company
Dude shows evidence to company, company changes poilcy, pays for the damage they’ve caused.
Done.

Done.

Furthest Friend

All day long at work I deal in kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. Sometimes we even talk about terabytes of data. But when it comes to distance, everyone sticks to the kilo- prefix (or miles because we can’t get on board with metrics).

I got to thinking about it, 2,865 miles from here to Long Valley, NJ sounds like a horribly long distance. But really, Laura is only

4.61077056 megameters

away from me. Four point six… she might as well be next door. They say it’s a small world, but that still puts a lot of important people a plane ride (or two) away from me. I feel like that distance gets in the way a lot. There are people I ought to talk to more, people whom I consider to be my friend who might have gotten married in the time that has slipped by.

As for the pronunciation of “megameters”, wheter it is me-GAM-e-ters, or meg-A-mee-ters, the guys at work and I couldn’t decide.

Things that smell like other things

To me, burrito’s and body odor smell very much the same. Sometimes I find myself wondering why it smells like meat, then I realize there’s a sweaty guy next to me.

Being an Adult

When I was 18 and legally became an “adult” I wondered when I would really be an adult. Would it be when I had a job that I could live on? Would it be when I bought a house? Would it be when I got married? Had a kid?

This week I was reminded that I decided long before I was 18 that [male] adults are adults because they get lint stuck in their belly button. This something that didn’t happen to me as a kid because I had no hair to trap the lint, but it was something that happened to my dad on a near daily basis.

This week I discovered lint in my belly button… I felt like celebrating just a little.

Family Expansion

I think what was most… “jarring” last time I went home was that everyone had new names. Mom was suddenly Grandma, Dad was now Grandpa, Jon became Dad, and I had a new name thrust upon me, Uncle Will. It’s like when you have a friend who changed what people called him in college, and you find yourself hanging out with his friends from high school, and they call him something totally alien and you can’t quite reconcile it in your brain fast enough to keep up on the conversation.

After my brother’s wedding to Vanessa this weekend, I now suddenly have a sister[in-law] too. I think for the first time, I felt what it means to be 2,000 miles away from my family. The relationship I have with my niece is very different than the one my parents have with  her, having seen her so much more than I have.

I think they are both pleased with how the wedding went. It was very much their wedding. They both had on casual foot wear for the ceremony and they had all the people there that they needed to be there for them. Standing at Jon’s side during the wedding, seeing Vanessa’s face as they spoke their vows, I feel confident in saying that this is a good marriage, one that I was proud to be a part of.

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Sad Face

I’ve been waiting 10 years for my high school reunion. But the RSVPs on Facebook only have Jenny and Sarah on the “Yes” list. I was hoping to catch up with everyone all in one spot. So to all you FHSers out there who haven’t said “Yes”, get you stuff in gear.

Pants Stance

Will: tomorrow, drunk bus
Will: bring your game face
Lara: I plan to
Will: should I wear pants? or no pants?
Lara: start the night with pants
Lara: and see how it goes

For clarity, Lara has no interest in seeing me sans-pants.

Student Council

Politics. I hate politics because I learned first hand in fifth grade just how bound any one person’s hands are. I knew going into it that even if I was president of the newly indoctrinated Hillside student council, I could not do things like “mandate that homework is optional”. Some things are just not within your power.

Then there’s things that are within your power, but you need agreement from your fellow council members. And then there’s a tiny sliver of trivial stuff that you can get done on your own.

That’s why it’s hard for me to hear criticism about any political office, why it is hard for me to get jazzed up about a politician who claims to make a change. It’s just hard. There’s too many moving parts, life is too short. I’m amazed anything ever gets done in government actually.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the system works quite well despite it’s inability to change. I think it is fairly reflective of people as individuals and our own stubbornness – and that’s what government is all about: representation. All I really want from a politician is someone who will do his best to represent the concerns of the people in his district, that’s it.

The Failure of Awesome

Josh sent me this link to a touch interface for desktops. It’s pretty awesome (and pretty vapor-ware), but it’ll meet the same demise of all input device innovation: lack of software.

Apple got it. Multi-touch hardware, and a whole lot of software that leverages that functionality. But if I hook up a multi-touch input  pad to a Windows box, what benefit do I get? Not much, maybe none.

It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Developers don’t want to write (or don’t get paid to write) software that is for a minuscule slice of the market. They write for the masses. So that means you have to get everyone to buy a multi-touch input device. But consumers aren’t [that] dumb. They want to buy stuff that adds value, and if there’s no software, they’re going to spend their dollar elsewhere.

Apple had a compelling story with the iPhone. It wasn’t just, “Hey look! Use your fingerS!!!!” It has a big ass screen with a great viewing angle. It had the best web browsing experience of any phone on the market. It went out of it’s way to make your life easier, and oh by the way, “…we do that with multi-touch”. It’s the same reason we got mice in the first place – input is just a thing, not the thing.