Alive and kicking

Ok, so I haven't posted in six months. My bad.

Reading back over some of my old posts I kind of wish now I had that record, but the problem is I'm still not sure just how public I want that record to be. Do I need to post for posterity the fact that I made an ass out of myself at the company party? Everyone at my company already knows about that (ironically, they're the only ones I wish didn't know about it... I have no problem relating these stories to friends that already know I act like a jackass. Such is the risk of over-imbibing at the company party. Everyone stay tuned to see if I've learned my lesson by next year.) So I suppose that's fair game. There's my recent trip to Sweden which was pretty cool (haha, see what I did there?)--pictures of Stockholm, Copenhagen (yes I know that's not in Sweden), the Ice Hotel and me in one of those awesome furry hats are here. New Year's was great too, what with the fan-friggin'-tastic New Year's Eve party and then the fan-friggin'-tastickier Rose Bowl game where we beat the crap out of Michigan. Again.

But aside from the odd noteworthy event, I feel as though I'm too busy to post about industry issues, books, and other topics that are actually worthy of discussion that I accidentally spend time thinking/reading about. And what's left bears uncanny resemblance to the diary I kept in middle school. The only real sign I've made any progress at all since then is the more complex sentence structure and a larger vocabulary.

So I suppose my writer's block stems from the fact that the stuff that's easiest to write about is stuff that I don't feel I can write about, at least not in a public forum. All my favorite conversation topics revolve around work and friends from work (a.k.a.: gossip) or things that I don't necessarily want work or friends from work to know about, and guess what, I work at an internet company. In the search engine marketing department, no less. Query my name on Google and this blog is the first thing that comes up. As a result, scrubbing my writing of anything I don't want publicized takes up enough time that it becomes prohibitive to posting on a regular basis, and is particularly detrimental to the generally on-the-fly style of writing that usually characterizes blogging. Hence my prolonged silence.

Given my attitude, one wonders why I ever started a blog in the first place. Back in grad school, there wasn't as much of a need to censor myself, and I had enough free time to get to know the Chicago bar scene, skip reading assignments, watch every episode of Law & Order: SVU ever made, show up to class an hour late, and blog. And when I posted complaints about how school was going, it was generally railing against the dictates of graduate school assignments and idiosyncrasies. Even when school was hard work, it was still fun and different. But no one wants to hear you complain about your job, particularly when there's precious little to complain about ('ugh, our catered lunch was from [insert caterer name here] again'). And the things that make you unhappy at work aren't frustrations with the work load you imposed on yourself by choosing to go to grad school in the first place, but gossip and bickering and politics. The things that irritate you can no longer be chalked up to "That's life!"--now they have a face and a name. Neither of which can be included here. And thus my dilemma of wanting to write something occasionally, but not knowing what to write.

I think that concludes today's musings. In our next episode, find out if our heroine is in fact able to resolve this conflict! Tune in in another six months for a post that will probably be a whole lot like this one! Until then, this is Adra, signing off.

Garden State 2

AKA, The Last Kiss. In fact, The Last Kiss looks like it could even be confused with Garden State 1. But don't take my word for it. Check out the (really really funny) breakdown here, complete with illustrations (because them words is hard to unnerstand sometimes).

Packrat

My computer at work has a 136 GB hard drive. And today, I found out that I've reached capacity. I've been here 5 months.

The data geekiness is becoming hard to ignore...

Normally I'd stay away from the Dilbert blog as a matter of principle (and I still maintain that I was tricked into clicking on the link by its being referred to as Scott Adams' blog, and I'm ok with acknowledging that I didn't know who Scott Adams was until today), and government-bashing doesn't really appeal to me, but I thought this post was just too dead-on to ignore. Excerpt:

My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says the world is being run by a handful of ultra-rich capitalists, and that our elected governments are mere puppets. I sure hope it’s true. Otherwise my survival depends on hordes of clueless goobers electing competent leaders.

The only way I can get to sleep at night is by imagining a secret cabal of highly competent puppetmasters who are handling the important decisions while our elected politicians debate flag burning and the definition of marriage.

Read the whole thing here.

Random link of the day

There are things that make you chuckle, and there are things that make you laugh, and then there are things that make you laugh so hard it actually starts to sound more like crying. (Please note: this is much more likely to happen when one works in a quiet office and is trying to suppress normal laughter, lest one's coworkers get the impression that one is not actually working and is instead surfing the internet, reading favorite blogs, and watching Ask a Ninja videos on YouTube.) And I was sent a link to something that falls into that latter category: an entry on Bloggy McBlogalot. Funny blog name. Even funnier post. It defies reason. But I still have tears in my eyes.

Ask a Ninja

I think I'm a little behind on discovering the awesomeness of Ask a Ninja, but that's no reason not to share it with other poor souls who have been in the dark until now. In particular, Ask an Animated Ninja, and Ninja Pirates of the Caribbean Movie Review.

And, while unrelated, this is hilarious too.

Goldman Sachs vs. Goldman Sex

I'm not sure this story about Goldman Sachs suing GoldmanSex.com is really a good example of common sense, both on the part of the plaintiff and on the part of the consumers supposedly confused by the names of these two entities. Chances are that anyone dumb enough to mistake one for the other is not bright enough to even know what Goldman Sachs does. I highly doubt they're losing a lot of potential clients this way.