Steve Mays @smays@mastodon.technology

"Blogs let you remember what you think, what you feel, what you say, how you say it, what you care about and how you live in this world actually matters. Blogs remind us we matter."

--Halley Suitt 

Probably my favorite quote on blogging. smays.com

Prayer from School of Rock

"All right, let’s pray.
God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass.
We are your humble servants.
Please give us the power to blow people’s minds with our high-voltage rock.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
Now, let’s get out there and melt some faces!"

AUDIO http://www.smays.com/2004/04/all-right-lets-pray-god/
#movies

DILBERT CARTOON

Applicant: How do you reward your top performers?

The Boss: I keep increasing their workloads until their performances become average.

Applicant: So…why would anyone try to excel?

The Boss: I use only the finest motivational posters.

From a WSJ article (March 29, 2004) about how Google is managed.

“…decisions are made in front of people. We don’t like people to go off and make a decision. We try to make decisions in as large a group as possible by as few people as possible.”

I'm still working on that last sentence.

"No one can get a drivers license or fly an airplane without taking a test. Why should marriage be any different? If you want to make marriage more stable, make divorce illegal. If people knew they couldn't get out of it, they'd be more careful getting into it."

-- Andy Rooney

I've always been a little amazed people can have children without passing some sort of test.

What I want to ask you is

Who are you?

Where are you?

Are you dreaming?

Are you there?
The way I’m here?

-- Pattern Recognition, page 256

I don't send a lot of email these days but sent a lot during my working years.

I betcha I could have put everything necessary and relevant in the subject line of 95% of those emails.

Just put "See subject line above" in the body.

“Writing a blog entry about a useful and/or interesting subject forces me to extract the salient features of the link into a two- or three-sentence elevator pitch to my readers, whose decision to follow a link is predicated on my ability to convey its interestingness to them. This exercise fixes the subjects in my head the same way that taking notes at a lecture does, putting them in reliable and easily-accessible mental registers.”

— Cory Doctorow on blogging (2004)

“Life is too short for office politics, for busywork and pointless paper chases, for jumping through hoops and covering our asses, for trying to please, to not offend, for constantly struggling to achieve some ever-receding definition of success. Too short as well for worrying whether we bought the right suit, the right breakfast cereal, the right laptop computer, the right brand of underarm deodorant. Life is too short because we die.”

-- Christopher Locke in The Cluetrain Manifesto

“In the end, everyone ends up with the people that are most like them that they can find.”

– Eastern Standard Tribe (pg.110), Cory Doctorow
#socialmedia

Next time you find yourself feeling down about your job...

"Calling their business Crime & Trauma Scene Specialists, Debbie Haar and her mother, Shirley MacNeill will clean up homicide or suicide scenes, homes where someone has died a natural death or even what they call “pack-rat” homes that need special care. The two are also trained to do extensive cleaning of medical offices and funeral homes and can remove tear gas or pepper spray from inside buildings.”

"Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade, and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular, the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework. Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon, and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today."

From Nostalgia by Billy Collins
Full poem at http://www.smays.com/2004/01/billy-collins/

Mistakes we insist on making over and over.

"…the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages."

From “World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else” (2004)

“When your heart breaks, you should die.”

— Angels in America (HBO)

Flames (A poem by Billy Collins)

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger’s hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher’s mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

“This country was founded by a group of slave owners who wanted to be free.”

-- George Carlin

Fear of the Deer by Steve Cutts
https://youtu.be/J6FPBV_ql6I

“And if one does what God does enough times, one will become as God is.”

— Hannibal Lecter

“That sound in the wall was not good. That was no skittering mousy or even gallopy rat sound. That was something altogether different. Suddenly the vent that mysteriously bent open a while back seemed terribly ominous. I immediately ran and got several drywall screws and screwed it shut all cockeyed and cartoonishly like a crazy person.”

— From Nikol Lohr’s The Disgruntled Housewife

5 good responses to telemarketers and collection agencies

1. I’m sorry, but what does this have to do with human sacrifice?

2. Seriously, will you still be this interested in me after we’ve dated for a while?

3. Would you be able to tell if I were defecating right now?

4. I am French. Your money means nothing to me.

5. I can smell your panties through the phone.

-- Merlin’s List of Five Things

[Alright. Lunch time]