Stubbornella - Nicole Sullivan

Multitasking has been stressing me, robbing me of my focus, my productivity, and my appreciation of the beauty of the exact moment I’m experiencing right now, and dammit, I want my brain back!

Once upon a time, I was assigned 21 projects in my first month on a job. Distinct projects, working with different groups of people on completely different tasks. I went from writing code 95% of the time to running from meeting to meeting.

At the same time, I installed IM at work and didn’t create a separate work account (I can see this clearly now, but at the time, I was just filling out my HR profile, I didn’t see the significance). The lines became blurry and I started to get pings around the clock from both work and friends. This is in part due to “crazy-round-world-syndrome”. My life is international, that’s okay, but it does make boundaries harder.

Perhaps it really began as early as 2000, when I got my first cell phone and lived with it glued to my ear? Getting an iphone in January of 2007 certainly made it worse because as a device my precious is meant to be petted, not simply used to accomplish other tasks more efficiently.

So what does a good geek do? Gather data.

I gathered data from scientific american, psychology today, read research papers, took a mindfullness course, and read links that friends posted to twitter.

without ever supporting McCain.

“There is no difference between the two devils, except family values.”

We were talking about politics over lunch. After some prodding I was able to understand that he meant that Obama and McCain were equally bad. By family values, he meant that the definition of marriage would change to include homosexual couples. In his mind, all the issues are more or less equal, both candidates are instruments of the devil, but at least McCain won’t let homosexuals get married.

I had wondered how the right wing would make people vote for McCain given his history of centrism. I’d be surprised if he even really cared about gay marriage one way or the other, but he is pandering hard, and this is his audience.

I want to take back family values. We’re not in some kind of Huxley nightmare-utopia. FAMILY VALUES means something real; you can’t distort words and use double-speak to convince Christians to make choices that don’t make any sense.

“…at the dawn of the 21st century we also have a collective responsibility to recommit ourselves to the dream; to strengthen that safety net, put the rungs back on that ladder to the middle-class, and give every family the chance that so many of our parents and grandparents had. This responsibility is one that’s been missing from Washington for far too long — a responsibility I intend to take very seriously as President.”

— Barack Obama, Spartanburg, SC, June 15, 2007

And why not? I spent years eating french pastry, but I still love cake.

This comic rocks, I finally found it again. And at the same time discovered that the artist drew from personal experience.

Anyone that has lived abroad for more than a few years, understands fundamentally not fitting. When I moved to Paris, I expected it to be a culture shock, to really change my ideas. It’s natural, I had to learn the language, and more than that, figure out how to make my way in a culture with vastly different values and customs than my own. To my surprise then, the biggest not-fitting had nothing to do with my adopted culture, but rather the first time I returned home after truly becoming French somewhere deep in my core. It’s only then that you realize your instincts are off, you find odd those who share the culture you once considered as natural as water to a fish.

I like paradigms, the way they encourage new ideas and reflection, but also how they are inherently flawed, as any simplification or generalization is, by nature, flawed. They are interesting because of the diversity they are capable and not capable of encompassing.

This test was very simple, and a little biased perhaps, because it was too easy to see how the responses related to the outcome.

Share your results:
98/100 – Visual
56/100 – Auditory
63/100 – Kinaesthetic

How do I learn? It seems six in one half dozen in the other. Split almost down the middle between theoretic, reflective, pragmatic, and active. Results like these are only really interesting if you are more skewed one way or the other. Perhaps this means I’m balanced in some kind of zen of learning.

Share with others:

I am: 8/20 theoretic, 12/20 reflective, 8/20 pragmatic and 10/20 active! How about you?

While filling out the forms and waiting for the doctor, an hour and ten minutes total, not one, two or three drug reps stopped by, but four. Four drug reps in an hour. These salesmen, essentially marketing experts (read prostitutes) for different drug companies deliver free medicines, pens, and clipboards in an attempt to influence which medicines a doctor prescribes for his patients. The secretary told me it is always like that, that they have a sign-in, visits every day, and never have to buy their own lunches.

… because he puts up with me the night before a big exam and a first forray into Javascript (the day before the project was due). He did the laundry, walked the dog, made me dinner, and encouraged me not to pull my hair out. I’ll post the code as soon as the project is [...]

Sinéad O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U, my list of favorite 80′s hits could not be complete without it.

I’m going back even further here. I think Free to Be You and Me must have been my first album. I remember it playing alongside Kenny Rogers (Lady was my mothers favorite song) and Casey Jones, which I’m a little surprised to find out is a Greatful Dead song because I thought I’d never heard [...]

My sister used to play Arthur’s Theme by Christopher Cross on the clarinet and our enormous mutt, Sam would howl along with her at the bottom of the stairs. I need to figure out if it is possible to link to the music snippets on iTunes music store. Hearing this stuff again is fabulous, even [...]

Def Leppard’s Pour some sugar on me reminds me SO much of rollerskating at church camp. The next year they changed the music to all Christian bands… but that first year was excellent. I still remember the boy who I invited to the banquet — I was a tomboy and practically ran him over on [...]

Alexandra has found her wedding dress. She asked me to be her temoine, something like a bridesmaid without the pink taffeta, last week and I happily accepted. I’d love to post a picture of her beautiful dress but we don’t want Etienne to see it!

But I’m and INFP! I just retook the Myers Briggs test, and granted at this point I know a little bit too much about it to be sure it is objective, but I scored extroverted. Kind of. I got a 1. I took the test once before moving to France and then again after being [...]

I finally got my results from the slightly broken (only test 6 and the results section) BBC brain sexID test. It turns out I am 50% male, 50% female. Not that much of a surprise, I may be a carpenter, but I still love pink.

J’ai vu Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars au MK2 Odéon. J’ai trouver l’histoire du jeune journaliste un peu pénible, mais en même temps nécessaire pour donner perspectif a l’histoire du François Mitterrand.

J’ai trouvée c’est petit phrase le plus impressionnant du film.

“Quelle est la couleur de la France? Non pas la couleur politique – je la connais – mais sa vraie couleur? le gris… Mais il existe une multitude de gris. C’est beau le gris. Gris des toits de paris, le gris historique de la guerre, le gris lavande de la provence. les gens qui n’aiment pas le gris sont des imbéciles…”

Today would have been the 29th birthday of my Nana. I still miss her so much.

because when I get a brilliant idea to have a half-cherry-tomato salad, he is completely willing to play along.

Five mullets in three weeks. And not your trailer park mullet where your mom shaved the top of your head and left a line straight across the back where the long hair begins, no no, this is a Parisian mullet. Its unisex, 3 out of 5 were women. So cute with overall short haircuts, shortest [...]

But I need to get over it first.

I’m still reading the news too much. This site made me feel a bit better, because I can at least be angry.

http://www.fuckthesouth.com/

I also finally found what I’ve been looking for and can maybe read a little less news. What is it? A cartogram of the United States based on population showing the election results in the usual striking red and blue. I also wanted a county by county version of the same. I just couldn’t abide by that big red map with the tiny bits of blue on either end. Why should Wyoming count so much more than Rhode Island, it may be huge, but no one lives there. I want to see a map that looks like the near 50-50 split that the election actually was.