Small Steps Forward

I guess you can throw a rock at an Israeli soldier and possibly not get killed.

Not a good idea to do that in the United States. And especially not Texas. The nice thing about throwing rocks at police in Texas is that it’s not New York. The police will just shoot you in Texas. In New York, the police will make you wish you were dead.

Seriously. I can’t believe there is an international brouhaha over anyone getting killed for throwing rocks at police. Especially since only one person — out of a group of rock throwers — died.

I’m trying — and completely failing — to imagine a scenario in which I would hurl rocks at someone who had a gun that was not pointed at me.

“Are you in show business?”
“I’m in the hide-and-seek business.”
“That is a game kids play.”
“But if you add some money to it, it’s for adults.”

The Missing Person

Act 1

I have two friends. Both are looking for work.

Something came up at the job I have. A rush job, requiring boring secretarial grunt work. Or maybe it could have done with some coding, I don’t know.

Up to now, I had been looking for opportunities to get both friends in here. My workplace seems to be a little skittish when it comes to hiring full-time, and I can understand why. Because of that skittishness, I thought the best way to get each friend in here was to find opportunities to showcase what each could do. And an opportunity arose.

An emergency rush job came up, and none of my co-workers were available for overtime. I called both friends. One is a VBA and Excel programmer exploring SharePoint. The other is interested in working for a hedge fund. (What a time to be trying to break into that field!)

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Every time someone says “It is what it is,” I hear “Who is John Galt?”

So every night she’d go out there and comb the grass, getting all the knots and tangles out. She had to use a wide-tooth comb in order not to break the delicate shoots of grass as she combed; she’d learned her lesson the hard way there.

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I had to write a quick note on brilliance conjecture’s blog post. (I don’t know the name of the author. I think the web site and my browser may be having issues.) The author writes about asking his mother one day why she didn’t try to fix a tech problem herself and her response that she was afraid that she’d break something. Apparently, the author attempted to explain that exploring options and experimenting wouldn’t necessarily “break” anything. To which the mother replied that the author’s experimental approach was due to his/her irresponsibility.

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She kept seeing these hungry dogs. The dogs were long past the point of hope, long past the days where they thought that going up to a human, sitting down a few feet from them, looking at them intently and in an expectant manner while enthusiastically but excitedly wagging their tail would get them want they wanted. They no longer looked at humans with big round eyes to drown in, no longer whinnied, or moaned or whimpered.

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Let me get this straight.

I meet a guy. Tall, attractive, charismatic, accomplished and hard-working. So much so, that I’m looking for flaws. There has to be at least one. I have a track record for picking … Well, let’s just say that I’ve chosen unwisely in the past.

And then he said something. I don’t even remember what he said, I just remember that it was at that point that I realized he would never be boring. Ever. Do you know how often I meet people who are never boring? Before now, NEVER. EVER. Not even ONCE. I never entertained the thought that such a person existed. It’s not even that I gave up hope that such a person existed; it’s that I never even imagined it in the first place.

He has a girlfriend.

So, let me get this straight. I met the perfect guy. He’s unavailable. And because I met him, I know he exists. And because he exists, the bar is now raised so that any other guy I would even consider would have to, at the very least, never be boring. And it took me several decades to find this guy.

Life #@$!%ing sucks.

I remember …

I had a conversation recently with someone. We were discussing how we consciously chose “other blackness.” I don’t know what to call it. Other blackness seems stupid, but maybe you’ve got a better term for it.

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MacHeist is having a sale. Well, it’s not really a sale so much as it’s an opportunity to score some great free applications (Some maybe more great than others; your mileage may vary.)

ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, Hordes of Orcs, and Mariner Write are all available for the next 3 days absolutely free at MacHeist.

Remember when you first started explaining Quicksilver to folks and it was like trying to create an online dating ad? Or trying to describe enlightenment?

So, I’m not even going to try and explain Autopilot; I’m just going to point you to the Autopilot demo screencast.

And I’m going to say wow….

Wow.