Vacation work

Should we feel guilty when we take time away from the office? Should we contemplate how to check in without the family knowing about it? At what point do we just say, “I’m on vacation, call me next week. “

Well over the years, I have been through this over and over, always wanting to be good corporate citizen. But as I have put in my time, I find it a lot easier to walk away and not look back. Some co-workers say they can’t do that, that they always need to be in contact. They say, “What if there is an emergency.” My response is, not your problem if you trust your teammates. Personally I think they fear that if things go well, then it shows they are not needed. But the opposite is true; if things go well, then you did your job and everyone knows it.

I think my attitude towards this stems from being called on my honeymoon. Granted the northeast was blacked out, but I told them, not my problem and gave them a name to call. Besides I don’t work for the power company.

So far this “leave it at the office” attitude has worked rather well. I find myself more rested, better able to handle tasks when I return, and in general a better worker. Granted in todays world of smart phones, work from home employees (like myself), and the internet, this stay away concept if a difficult one. But for those that can do it, it pays rewards in the end.

Well time for me to go and enjoy my vacation now.

How things would have been different

Lets step back in time (20 years) for a minute and think about how things would have been different, if we had cell phones, facebook, hell even the Internet, back in the day. For me, that’s high school, god has it been that long. Well that’s another story for another time.

In our step back, how easy would it have been to keep up with friends. I’m not so much thinking of the ones you see everyday but the ones that move away. How about the ones that go to a different college. Having just gone to my wifes 20 year high school reunion got me to thinking about this.

After moving into Facebook in the last year, I have started talking to people that I would not have found, or at least not found without looking like a stalker.

There are still some I’m looking for but not having any luck. Oh how Facebook could have saved the day. Sure some people move away and at that point start their new lives, but I haven’t found anyone yet that doesn’t enjoy talking about the times gone by.

So my journey continues as I scan twitter, facebook and others. I could search My Space, but there are way too many dead profiles there, not toention the other junk.

Well until my next post. Hopefully they get better each time.

Pandora rules the roost

After trying more apps than I care to admit to, granted most were of the free variety, Pandora has found a special place on my iPhone.

There are a few things that would actually make this a better app, but at this time those changes are out of the hands of the developers. But if the time comes, this is what I would like to see in this app:
1. Ability run run the app while running other apps. (please open this up Apple)
And
2. View friends lists.

Since the last update (1.1) to the iPhone app, it now allows you continue where you left off. This is the best option until Apple opens up the ability to have apps running in the background.

So as of this writing, I’m considering moving Pandora into the home dock on my phone.

Did I miss the election

With all the news about Barack Obama aka the second coming, I’m begining to think that I missed the election. I also think Obama missed the memo that said he has not been elected yet.

He’s traveling around like the President does after he’s elected. And the reaction to him in Europe is classic. Of course they they love him. His goal is to tax the American citizen to the point where we are so weak, that the EU takes over as the leading word on world politics.

I just wish we could vote “none of the above” and start over. None of the options are worth a damn, but at this point I would rather have McCain in office thank Obama.

I’m sure I’ll have more rants coming as the election draws near.

Another day on the social world

Well another day in the social network world and more experiences. Let’s get the bad out of the way first.

Twitter decided to have a slight malfunction and remove followers and those you were following. They didn’t wipe your entire group but a good number. They are working on the issue and I now seem to have my groupings back. Yea

Was that really bad news. Dunno.

Another thing that I have found rather informative and fun is friendfeed. Here you can find the feeds of persons all grouped in one place. Now if I only had people subscribed to my friendfeed. Maybe tomorrow.

I did come across an interesting trend in facebook. It appears that people I know seem to all find me or me find them in groups. I can go weeks and not find or add anyone as a friend, then boom I have five or six in a row.

While I’m talking about facebook, the new design is much better. For a while there I was starting to think facebook was nothing but a gaming site. With this new design, it brings a look of being more professional without having that Linkedin look.

Well until the next time.

iPhone blogging

Now that I have had my phone for a little of a week, I decided to see how much I can really type out on this keypad.

It’s actually surprising how fast you can type on this keypad. Some things that I have found that really help.

1. Know how to type before moving to this keyboard. Not so much from being a touch typist as just knowing where the keys are. Because unless you have stylist fingers, there is no way you are getting all ten digits on this thing.

2. Trust the predictive typing help.

3. Practice practice practice.

This little blog only took about 4 minutes to pump out on the iPhone.

iPhone backups and other items

Ok Apple really needs to address the backup time in iTunes. This last time it ran for almost two hours. It’s not like I have a lot of apps installed.

Other that the backup times, I’m loving this new phone, granted I haven’t made that many calls on this.

So far we are tearing through our SMS messages, good thing it’s unlimited. Also loving the apps and so far most are games, but have explored several other apps.

1. Twitter apps
2. Blog apps like the new WordPress.

More too come.

First post from iPhone

This is the first post using the workpress iPhone app. We’ll see how it goes.

Going to include a pic from the deck in the back yard.