Lunch Today

For those of you who don't know, the best part about my job is that we get lunch brought in every day. Well, to be precise, we get lunch Monday through Thursday, and breakfast on Friday. The quality of food definitely varies, but luckily today is going to be a good day. Mendocino Farms. One of the highest quality sandwich makers in the City of Angels. There is something of a strategy to be the first into the lunch room to get the best sandwich picks. Usually we eat at 12:00 on the dot, but on these special days you'll see people creeping in the direction as early as 11:30 or so. It's something to look forward to. It's real cool to not have to worry about what you are going to have to bring or buy for lunch, and somewhat puts a floor on the quality that you might eat if lunch was fully up to you. So yeah, thats the best thing that is going to happen to me until I get off work. What about you guys? What are you looking forward to for the rest of the time before you're leisure time sets in?

Cool Day at Work

Memorial Day Weekend is upon us 'yall. And in the working world we know there are alot of ways to truely take advantage of this federal holiday. Number one way is to either take Friday (today) or the upcoming Tuesday off. Or both! This is advantageous because it can be shown that vacation, time off, and leisure in general does NOT experience decreasing marginal returns before 9.3 days. In fact, the behaviour of the returns to days off is best modeled with a quadratic and maximum at the aforementioned 9.3 days. Days off experience strong increasing marginal returns before this point. It must be noted, however, that this result is often muted by what could be called the impending workweek effect. Maybe you have experienced this if your friends have, at the pinnacle of your Friday night fun (whether that be a rousing game of fifa, or a smashing good time walking to Yogurtland) said something to the affect of "Only 48 hours 'till the work week begins anew!" So please take this impending workweek effect into account when analyzing such things.

Another strategy to take advantage of long weekend is to increase the weekend length while not using up those precious (or not so much in my case!) paid time off days. This is simply leaving work early on Friday (today). In my office this is usually the case as we close a tad earlier on days directly preceding holidays. The quittin time today was initially 3PM. Then promptly as I arrived an email was circulated indicating quittin time was 2:30. Within an hour I was invited my a manger to take part in a "late lunch" circa 1PM at a local pub. In effect, that will be the end of the day. Whether it is the de facto quittin time or actual fact, is to be seen. I will take the lead of those who make more than I (yes those people do exist!).

Coffee Break

Went on my daily coffee break right now. It's a nice day outside and via yesterdays post, you know how I feel about that. So I won't beat a dead horse. But was a nice walk to the local coffee bean & tea leaf. Got the small iced coffee with the (no-sugar) vanilla powder. This was most likely not the best decision. The small coffee is 1.79 I think and the regular is 2.00. The flavored powder is 0.50, regardless of size. So essentially I got something near half the amount of coffee, and saved ~ 0.20. Not a victory in my mind. Decided to step up my coffee intake because the summer is coming up and I heard that caffeine helps fat transfer aka gettin me cut. Hopefully my discussion regarding Facetime, goes into effect soon and I can get out of here earlier than normal.

Family Portraits

Just had a nice talk at lunch regarding family portraits. Don't know how I feel about them other than people appear to be strong armed into getting them done by their significant other. It would appear with the advent of digital photography there were enough photos of everyone to go around that you wouldn't need any of the professional type. Haven't really looked into the business model or what kinds of returns these guys are getting. In connection to this topic it came under the branch of "things planned to do this weekend." So I suppose when you have kids and are married this is the pinnacle achievement of the weekend. That being said, I don't have anything that would be deemed an accomplishment set up for the weekend. Maybe read a tad. Possibly go to the batting cages. Play video games.

Interestingly enough my life is pretty sick because I do things that when I was a kid I really hoped I could do. And I'm doing them. Are these achievements by any adult standard? Bar a few, most likely not.

Facetime

A curious concept permeates the modern workplace - known as Facetime (aka "Face Time"). It is the result of a desire by subordinates and managers alike to be more dedicated than the next to the company cause. It's definition is being at work for the sake of being at work, not to achieve a particular gain in whatever a given company produces. My opinion is that it is ubiquitous among companies that maintain high profit margins. This is the result of strong barriers to entry, strong emotional ties with clients, or some other market inefficiency. Otherwise, Facetime would be replaced by a) actually doing work in lieu of Facetime or b) when there is no work to be done - going home. But neither of these exist in practice. Some mention must be given to the concept of moral when there is a large deficit of work. People don't want any more explicit acknowledgement of a dearth of prospective revenue or other type of results of work and effort. Also it must be mentioned that substantial shifts in time and work allocation are probably not the best way to structure an office atmosphere. That being said, the ebbs and flows of workloads I imagine can be managed by most people with a high degree of autonomy. A further analysis probably reveals that if this were the case, remote and work from home type setups would be more common - and possibly they increasingly are. But to be precise, what I am addressing here is just a situation when there is no work to be done, and people still working ~ the same hours.

However, the above discourse is not the point of this post. This post is to discuss the more curious concept that I have witnessed regarding gaming this system and something of a negative-feedback effect that is related. My boss likes no one to leave before he. Fine. I can deal with that and indeed regularly subscribe to his need for this subordination. Regarding arrival time there is no analogous system in place. To be succinct - he does not require everyone to arrive before he. So the following situation has arisen: people show up substantially after him, and this later arrival time is not offset completely by the subordinates later time of departure. To compensate for this he has been leaving increasingly (and regularly) earlier than before this phenomenon had began to really be capitalized on. This is a net gain for me. I arrive later - and leave earlier than I would otherwise. Game theory at its finest? Some might agree.

Thank you Professor Thomas Ferguson.

A Nice Walk

Today I ate lunch with a little bit of haste. The haste was to ensure I had ample time to smell the roses as I went on an afternoon walk. It is a beautiful mid 70s day here in downtown Los Angeles, and it would be a  waste to spend the whole waking day indoors. So I meandered on down to a little local park on the campus of some small trade school about six blocks away. Water cup in hand, I was in no rush. After the roughly ten minute walk I found myself a bench to sit down and just watch the people walk by. It was comforting to notice that I wasn't the only office dweller who had experienced a similar inspiration while click-clacking away at my computer screen. I wondered to myself, how many different responsibilities did each of us have - yet we all yearned for the enjoyment of a simple late spring day and the feel of sun on our face. We all knew that in short order we would be back inside - staring at the outdoors of our window (those of us luckily enough to have a view to the outside world). There were no revelations reached by any of this cohort. Rather, just an appreciation of what is here and now. At most, one would acknowledge that they'd wish they were able to enjoy more of this sort of excursion - but we stop short at any real effort to bring this to fruition. I took a brief nap and further escaped the world that I know so well inside my office. A dream within a dream, if you will. And then I was awoken from them both and am here back in the office doing things that aren't as rewarding, but that fulfill a tangible role in life. One that allows me to experience the joys of a more existential journey.


It is often said, if it wasn't for the rainy days - we wouldn't appreciate the sunny ones.

Brief Post

Sorry for lack of posts guys. I've been real busy in my life and everything. But this caught my eye and I needed to share. Please discuss below:

Doan Arrived, Osama Died.

Well whats done is done. This was something that many of the "Illuminati" of the Blog had known for a while was in the works. But, for obvious reasons we weren't really allowed to address or speak upon. If you'll notice many of the comments seemed to imply something like this was going to happen. I'm not going to be the one actually describing the sequence of events of this thing - because we have a source. A primary source. Please turn over to your main media outlets to hear what you can find everywhere. If you want to know the REAL play by play from....the MAN WHO KILLED OSAMA HIMSELF?!!!!... then this is the place to be. We all know that two things happened:

1. Doan Arrived
2. Osama Died

If you put those two things together you will see exactly this is going. Ill give you something of a preview by using some previous movies that describe how the follower of this very blog killed osama: The Matrix. Passion of the Christ. Scarface. The Bourne Ultimatum. Mission Impossible (The one where Tom Cruise pulls off the fake face showing he's someone else). The Sixth Sense (You'll see). And the Wizard of Oz.

I don't want to give away too much. But, you'll soon see if our guest grants us the privilege of his first hand account of how he orchestrated and carried out one of the most famous covert operations since the 13th century.