Bryan sucks.

1. What time do you usually leave for lunch?

I try to go as close to 1100 as I can. There are a couple places close by that are packed by 1115, so I learned to go early if I wanted a table without a wait. Every Tuesday, I meet with friends for Thai at 1115, but then on Thursdays, I have a telecon at 1100, so … it varies.

2. How long do you usually take for lunch?

It varies depending how busy I am at the office. If I’m covered up, I take a shorter break. The inverse of that is that, if I’m really stressed out, I’ll go a little longer. I’ve taken up to two hours, but that’s very rare. Usually an hour if I leave the office for lunch, a half-hour if I eat at my desk.

3. Ever eat lunch at home?

Yeah, I’ve done it. Not as often now that I live in Madison, though.

4. What are your favorite places to eat out for Work Lunch?

I personally am craving Thai Garden since we didn’t go on Tuesday. Like … I want Thai, and it’s before 0700 on a Saturday.

5. How often do you bring food in from home?

When I was a broke college kid, all the time. Now, not so much. Lazy. Plus, when I bring lunch, I tend to not leave the office, and I’ve found that leaving the office is good for my stress level.

6. Are you a lone ranger or a community eater?

I eat with co-workers or friends 2-3 times a week. Some weeks, it’s every day. Some weeks, it’s not at all.

7. How often does your company pay for your lunch?

Once a quarter or so, if a meeting runs into lunch.

8. What is your favorite lunch meal of all time?

Mmm … three-star chicken Pad Thai.

Back a year ago, John Gruber argued [and I concurred] that the iPhone was designed for consuming and not creating. This has not changed with the iPhone 3G—the only thing that’s changed, really, is that the App Store now means that the iPhone is for play. [Some would argue that play is consumption, but I'm not getting into consumer psychology tonight.]

But even those who once said “I would go raving nuts trying to use the iPhone as my mobile device” are now consuming on their iPhone:

I credit Brent and the excellent NetNewsWire for iPhone for my newfound ability to (almost) keep up with my feeds again.

Mind you, I don’t expect that Alex wrote the post on his iPhone … or his Crackberry. And this is not an argument that Alex should make the switch. He can’t get the hang of the iPhone keyboard, and he’s used to the Blackberry. Arguing that he should switch would be like me arguing that he should drive a manual transmission—just because I love it and think that it’s awesome doesn’t mean that it’s for him. I’d just argue that, well, he should know how in an emergency—and I’m sure that he does.

[Okay, I've only ridden with Alex a handful of times, and I can't remember whether or not his car is an automatic. I'm fairly sure his wife's is, but I won't hold that against him.]

[[And Alex, yes, I wrote this so I could tweak you and go all "iPhone FTW!!!" You know you're laughing.]]

This one’s real simple, folks: Elliott Smith would’ve turned 39 today. XO, which I consider his masterpiece, will celebrate it’s tenth anniversary in a little under three weeks. Here’s what I’m gonna do:

If you’ve never owned any of Elliott’s albums and want to give him a try, leave a comment below. If more than ten people chime in, I’ll randomly pick ten names from the comment list. Please leave your real email in the comment form, as that’s the only good way I’ll have to contact you. When August 25th rolls around, I’ll pick my ten names, get the addresses, and get you a copy of XO from Amazon shipped to your location. If you don’t want to give me your address, then put it on your Wishlist and I’ll buy it for you.

Simple enough for you? I’ve often heard it said that if you love something, you’ll give it away for free. I’d love to do that for you, dear reader.

[If you're an Elliott fan and want to link this on your Weblog to help spread the love, that'd be cool. Thanks.]

Update, 7 Aug: Thanks to Chad’s publicity help, I’m definitely now past 10 people. So yeah, keep on commenting … everyone who comments will get an equal chance [so, in other words, commenting a dozen times won't help, and will probably just irritate me]. And for those of you who’ve just jumped in to say that this is cool, thanks. Tell people that you know about it, eh?

So earlier tonight, I tweeted:

Is it wrong that I want a syndication feed of my changes on Wikipedia?

Jason replied:

yes, you mad bread crumb collector, you.

Yeah, that’s me … a digital bread crumb collector. I’m as much trying to understand myself as anything. My instinct as both an engineer and a manager is to always get data.

I think I need to refine the Equation of Motivation for that pre-vacation period when you don’t feel like doing diddly-crap. I would, but I’m too apathetic [and have too much to do before I leave here tomorrow as it is].

Limbs Down

Originally uploaded by Geof F. Morris

We had quite a storm roll through Madison County, today, and there are limbs down all over our neighborhood. This is the tree in the front yard of my neighbor’s house just to the west of me; I expect that it will be a total loss, because the tree pretty well split in half, with a slight majority of the tree now being on the ground.

I took this photo as I left the house, and as I came back, my neighbors pulled up. They were, suffice it to say, a bit surprised. They have to walk through their front flowerbed to get into the house.

I’m just thankful that the tree in my own yard didn’t split and hit my WRX. As Amy said, “Then it would have been Hulk Smash.” Persactly.

… I will post this photo of myself at age 15. Check the 1) College Republican haircut 2) kickin’ red paisley tie [okay, I actually like that tie and wish I still had it; I think Dad got it at one point] and 3) terrible, terrible shoes.

We’re singing a small group arrangement of the Whitney Houston version of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Two of the five people in that photo are in the music industry today: Stacey [center, in the terrible blue dress that is, I think, causing her existential angst today as she's seen this photo] is doing vocal work in LA, while Cory [far right] is working as a hip-hop producer. Tom [far left] is a lawyer working for a bank, and I don’t know what Jennifer’s doing.

If nothing else, though, this photo is proof that I was once just a wee bit pudgy, instead of being a big ol’ fat boy like I am now.

I just realized how fully involved my NADD is:

1. Nationals @ Reds on my XM radio.
2. Wimbledon on my TV, since Chip let me know that Wimbledon is into its fifth set.
3. All the stuff going on with the new iMac [named Discovery, FTR]. You know, my standard set of programs and all that.
4. My work laptop humming along, adding music with Exact Audio Copy.

Yeah, I have three large screens to look at—the smallest being the 17″ widescreen LCD on my work laptop, which I have taken to referring to as “a battleship” and my back has taken to referring to as “that thing I’m glad that he only makes me lug home two or three times a week”. I’m happy as a pig in slop.

:twitch:

Found via Amy, who also points to where to get your own.

Well, since Jeff called me out like a punk, I better go through with it. It’s not like I’ve been writing about much lately anyway. [Besides, I get to break out Jeff's favorite tag!]

The rules of the “game” are simple:

1. list your top ten favorite films (in no particular order).
2. if you’re tagged, you’ve got to post and tag 3-5 other people.
3. give a tag back (some link love) to the one who tagged you in your post
4. give a hat tip (HT) to Dan

I’ll follow those, except somehow along the way, Dan lost the linklove. Sorry, dude. Since these are in no particular order, I won’t use an ordered list. That saves me brain cycles on ordering them…

• Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back: Yes, they are defining movies of my generation, even if the first one came out before I was born. I don’t include RotJ because I hate Ewoks, and the first three … well, the problem is the same: letting Lucas write dialogue is like letting me plan an exercise regimen.
• The Big Lebowski. I adore introducing this farcical romp of mistaken identity to people. Goes better with a good Caucasian, and I mix a hell of a Caucasian, Jackie. And yes, because I am a large, bearded man, I often get pushed into role-playing Walter. Eight year olds, Dude.
• Primer. I’ll go off the board here with a movie I’ve seen only once, but have probably replayed in my head a number of times. It absolutely blew my fuckin’ mind when I saw it.
• Clerks. So recently, a friend called this “a whiny bitch movie”. And, well, yes. It’s crude and hilarious, but it’s also pretty ingenious. Well, for a buddy movie shot in black and white that involves playing roller hockey on the roof of convenience store. This movie, of course, made Kevin Smith’s career. Thankfully, it was the first of his films that I saw.
• Arma … okay, no, I couldn’t finish typing it. Seriously, this is a fun movie to watch with me ONLY IF YOU LIKE TO LISTEN TO ME YELL AT THE TV AND THROW STUFF AROUND THE ROOM. Ahem. [I'm a killjoy.]
• Swingers. Right up there with Lebowski, a movie I can pop in at any time and always feel better afterward. When I thought yesterday that I’d be driving to Houston last night, I said, “I can be to Houston by midnight. Hell, I’ll be up five hundy by midnight!” Too bad no one in the room got it.
• Miracle, for two reasons: the agonizing “AGAIN! [whistle]” scene, which is totally legit, and … well, beating the fucking Soviets. Okay, a third reason: Kurt Russell’s son plays hockey for my alma mater, and not yours. Chumps.
• Apollo XIII. Um, hi. I work in manned spaceflight, and this movie makes heroes out of engineers. Not all of my days are as exciting as the “We’ve got to make this fit into this using this” scene, but some days, it feels like that. Without, you know, the deadline and the risk of people dying if we keep on fucking around.
• High Fidelity. Let’s just say that I watched it last week and lived it starting Sunday. Well, not really. But I did consider autobiographically organizing my CD collection. [I'm okay, though. Really.] Admission: if I were independently wealthy, I would buy a big, old downtown building and put a coffeehouse/bar, record store, and music venue in it. I would also hire John Cusack to manage it and smoke a lot of cigarettes.
• Shawshank Redemption. If you have to ask why, you clearly have not watched the movie, and … well, you should. Mind you, this comes from someone who really doesn’t watch movies that often.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ending with Kubrick is always a great choice. Stunningly beautiful, hauntingly weird, terribly quotable, and spot-on. Well, other than the fact that we’re seven years past that and still fucking around in low Earth orbit.

Okay, since I have to have a list of victims …

• Kari
• Amy
• Stephen and Misty, since we watch movies together.
• Alex, because he’ll be pissed at me for calling him out.

I pose this question to my loyal readership: Do you have a GPS unit? If so, would you recommend one like it to me?

Let me explain my expected use case so you can use that to tinge your suggestion: I wish to have geodata for content generation, largely photography. I’m not really so concerned with GPS directions for driving, really, because I typically have a good sense of direction [unless I'm on a date, and then it goes to hell ... no, really] and also have an iPhone, so I’m good when it comes to directions, mainly.

That posted … suggest away.

I took some time at lunch and watched/listened to Clay Shirky’s talk about the cognitive surplus, which I’d seen linked a lot of places, but today by Jeremy Zawodny.

I was reminded of a pledge to use time-shifting for awesome. I then sent myself to the penalty box for a ten-minute misconduct.

Okay, off to watch some Law & Order. :sigh:

Until the speedier iMacs became available this morning, I was pretty well set on going for a Mac notebook—either a Macbook Pro or a Macbook Air. But I tell you … that top-end iMac, buttressed with 4GB of RAM [that I'd buy third-party, natch], that’s hard to pass up. Why?

1. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t use a laptop that much. My iBook gets some use around my house, and some use when I leave the house, but I don’t seriously attempt to work from it, unless I’m on the road with work. Which leads me to …
2. The fact that I’m about to have a work laptop [sadly, a Windows machine], which obviates any “need” [being such a relative term when we're talking about $2000 machines while people starve on far less per year in Africa; yes, I want cheese with my white whine] for having a personal laptop for quasi-work purposes. Here I ask myself: on a business trip, am I going to carry two laptops, one for work and one for personal use? The answer is, of course, no.
3. I don’t yet merit a Mac Pro, although I want one. My budget for this endeavor is largely the $2500 biennial computer purchase money I get from corporate [you'd do this, too, if you got the money interest-free]; the only machine I could see myself outspending this for is a Macbook Air with a solid-state drive, which I’d get based off of Alex’s experiences with his MBA. The top-end iMac fits in my budget, although I’ll have to be the one paying for the RAM [which is fine; I'll just get some software I'd buy otherwise pre-installed to offset that cost].

That said, I’m gonna go until at least the end of the week on this decision, because I don’t wish to act rashly just because Apple put out a new play-pretty today. [Lunch break over, back to the salt mines.]

In honor of Stephen going to ROFLCon, where at least he can’t come up with a dastardly plan to take down the server, I would like to present my favorite LOLCat of the moment:

Thanks to Chris for pointing to this earlier today when Jeff was bored. [Yeah, I know, the pidgin's not bad, but I laffed.]

I’ve become aware over the last week or so that students at The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science are being asked to pay $500 a semester to cover room and board. I have exactly three reactions to this:

1. It would have been worth $2,000 to my parents to send me there over two years. If nothing else, I probably shaved a year off of college, and that was worth $2,000. Plus, it was one of the best experiences of my life.
2. I know a lot of folks that I went to school with would not have been able to afford this at all. Yes, as the Commercial Dispatch notes, there are waivers for those MSMS students who come from very poor families, but there is a group of students that would be left behind in that case, and as an alumnus, that saddens me greatly.
3. If this really goes into effect, I’ll give $1,000 a year to the MSMS Foundation to offset the cost, and I challenge my fellow alumni to give as well.

Now, I don’t live in Mississippi anymore, but I have family that does, and so do my friends that are also alumni. I really hope that they’ll all get involved, and frankly, I really hope that Doug takes this and runs with it as a member of the media. Big brother, if you need help finding a local student who would be affected by this, I can absolutely put you in touch with the right folks to find out.