1847-1931: Thomas Edison
1901-1966: Walt Disney
1955-Present: Steve Jobs

These men in my mind were all the same. Men who had a great idea, which they implemented on their own steam. That idea then gave them the financial resources to hire nameless practitioners to implement every far-reaching idea they had.

Edison makes the light bulb, a tedious process of trail and error. He then created a research lab, where thousands of patents were filed in his name. Disney brought sound to cartoons, and soon found himself with Imagineers, people who would help him later build Disney Land and Disney World, creating animated masterpieces previously thought to be unprofitable. Then we have Steve Jobs, visionary of Apple, who brought us crazy things like a home computer and a mouse in the face of “the public has no use for computers and who needs anything besides a keyboard anyway?” I hear talk of the “wrath” of Jobs and how easily one can find himself fired at Apple.

I am not agreeing, or disagreeing with the methods of these men. What is interesting to me is the pattern. I also submit that the world only has room for one of these such men at a time. Men who braved a gamble because they knew in their gut the world wanted what they could pluck from dreams and turn into reality. Men who then took that reality, and made a factory out of ideas. Men who created an industry that wasn’t there before.

At times, I want to be one of those men. A man who knows what it is that the world lacks so desperately. But I do not think I have the constitution it takes to know in my gut that I should press on with a thing that sounds ridiculous until it becomes common place.

You once were part of fantastic movies (Robin Hood, Shawshank Redemption, etc). Now it seems like everything you’re part of is crap (list omitted for  brevity).

Sincerely,
Will

P.S. Maybe the facial hair makes you weak?

I swore off girls in search of something. Now they’re less sworn off (and yes, dudes, you’re still out in case you were curious). There was something I had lost. Something I was good at doing, and it was something I had forgotten. It was the thing that made relationships special, magical.

Shoes.

Not the kind you wear, but the kind you stand in that belong to your girlfriend. The kind that tell you that she’s worked a lot on being more earth friendly, so when you notice that she went to the effort to get a blue bin so recycling is easier, it melts her heart.

Tonight, I was reminded of those shoes that I had stopped standing in. Someone I know complimented me on my ability to keep running with a humorous story to the point where it gets her laughing so hard she can no longer breathe. I love those stories, and that’s “my flavor” of comedy. It’s what I love doing, what I feel I’m really good at. To have a simple compliment, something made almost in passing, made my day.

I hope I can return the favor soon enough.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.