I would like to say that I can feel the darkness receding but the truth is that in my Federally mandated cube farm I’m so cut off from the world’s natural processes that for the first time in a long time the growing dark as we’ve headed toward mid-winter hasn’t had that much impact on me. Yes, even though it’s midnight when I walk out of my office building I’m just so damn glad to be in the “natural” world again it really doesn’t matter. Regardless, here are this year’s charts: [Read more…] about Not a minute too soon either
Archives for 2011
Random things culled from the Interwebs
I’m having a bit of an infographic contest with a friend of mine. Every couple of days she’ll send me a link to an infographic by email. I, in turn, will counter with a link to another infographic. It’s really a modern, data fueled one-up-manship contest just like those you might overhear in a pub on a Friday night…only with visuals.
To that end, here are a few things we’ve both found interesting in the past couple of weeks.
The Story of Broke
Brought to you by Annie Leonard (The Story of Stuff, The Story of Electronics) and the fabulous team at Free Range Studios, The Story of Broke “calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It’s time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let’s build it better.”
99% v 1%: the data behind the Occupy movement
The Datablog at The Guardian regularly produces fabulous graphics from unimpeachable data sources. For this article and animation they take a look the Occupy movement’s slogan that it represents “the 99%” to determine if that figure is accurate.
XKCD: Money (pretty much all of it)
The great thing about XKCD is that it’s a comic but it’s also drawn by a massive geek which means there are sometimes great opportunities for data presented visually. Monday’s cartoon is all about money visually representing how much it takes to do certain things.
Finding the scent
Well, I’m sucking at this NaBloPoMo thing. It’s now the 17th of the month and I’ve only written 10 entries. That means I’ve missed a week’s worth of entries. In some ways I’m surprised by this; it’s not as if I’ve got a wild social life that’s taking up a ton of time. In other ways, it’s pretty much par for the course.
Loathesome Job has had a lot of deleterious effects on my personality over the past 8 months. In order to survive, to keep my spleen from exploding from both astonishment and outrage I’ve had to spend a lot of mental and emotional energy detaching:
- I have learned not to care about the fact that virtually everyone I work with has a rampant case of not my job-itis.
- I have learned not to care that the person who is ostensibly in charge of making the websites my group works on good thinks that making the experience pleasant for the user is the same as making sure someone who is blind can access the site at all.
- I have learned, mostly, to stifle my bullshit alarm when Management sends a note out saying that the IT guy will be around to install webcams on all our computers but it’s not so they can watch us during the work day.
- I have learned to accept that I’ve been given what is essentially a window watcher job because Management has such a need to control its staff that they’d rather waste my talents than give someone on the “content” side “technical” tasks.
I’ve detached so well that things that used to really bother me merit merely a weary shrug these days. I can’t seem to get exercised about or involved in virtually anything.
It does not help that it is midnight outside at 5pm. It does not help that I work in a 12 ft x 8 ft cubicle jammed into an interior room with 14 other 12 ft x 8 ft cubicles. It does not help that when I do make it out of my office building there is nothing, and I mean nothing, stimulating in the vicinity. It does not help that almost my entire support system, anemic as it is, exists no where near me physically (not to mention the fact that everyone in my support system is dealing with their own problems right now).
Manhunter, 1986
There’s this great scene in the movie Manhunter, in fact it’s the first time we meet Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox). Will Graham (William Petersen) has brought the files from the Toothfairy case to Lecktor ostensibly to get the doctor’s opinion on the killer’s motives and methods.
Lecktor realizes that Graham isn’t actually there to get his opinion on the case. No, Graham is there to get the old scent back, to get back into the mindset that allowed him to catch Lecktor in the first place.
I’m afraid that I’ve detached so well that I’ve become detached not only from life but from who I am and what I want. I’m even more afraid that I won’t be able to get my own scent back.
Ten rules for dealing with crazy
- If you don’t have to deal with a crazy person, don’t.
- You can’t outsmart crazy. You also can’t fix crazy. (You could outcrazy it, but that makes you crazy too.)
- When you get in a contest of wills with a crazy person, you’ve already lost.
- The crazy person doesn’t have as much to lose as you.
- Your desired outcome is to get away from the crazy person.
- You have no idea what the crazy person’s desired outcome is.
- The crazy person sees anything you have done as justification for what she’s about to do.
- Anything nice you do for the crazy person, she will use as ammunition later.
- The crazy person sees any outcome as vindication.
- When you start caring what the crazy person thinks, you’re joining her in her craziness.
Photos of the Days
It’s more dramatic in person. Trust me.