Tag Archives: Thoughts

The year winding down is always a good time for reflection. And on this Thanksgiving, I have to say that I cannot remember a year like this one. A year that has made me so depressed and dispirited. A year … Continue reading →

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Posted on November 25, 2009

A wise old Native American once said: Only the government would believe you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom and have a longer blanket. Good-bye, 5:00 p.m. daylight. I’m going to … Continue reading →

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Posted on October 31, 2009

Sleep, beautiful sleep: Thoughts on insomnia and related things

Posted on August 25, 2009 | 1 Comment
The Nightmare

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Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

–Macbeth, William Shakespeare

When something is a precious commodity, necessary but sometimes hard to come by, you tend to become obsessed with that thing. For me, that thing is sleep.

I have been plagued by insomnia, off and on, for pretty much all of my adult life. In most cases, it takes the form of nocturnal awakenings: waking in the middle of the night and then having trouble falling back to sleep. More rarely, it presents itself as onset insomnia, difficulty falling asleep. In either case, I usually tell myself stories to try to trick myself into falling asleep. Usually, I end up obsessing over things not done or still to do.

I never take the commonly given advice to get up and do something when I have insomnia, unless I am very wide awake and my brain won’t stop racing until I do something to quiet it. I think that advice is dangerous. For one thing I believe we doze more than we think we do, and some sleep is better than none. I’m also worried I’ll miss that magic window when I drift back into real sleep if I am not lying down in the dark.

Once I saw a fim about a DJ who made himself stay awake for 8 days and nights. I will never forget his face. He turned into a pyschopath before my eyes. At the end, he was sleeping sitting up with his eyes open. No wonder sleep deprivation is a form of torture. We need our sleep.

Even worse are periods of sleep paralysis, which may be caused by sleep deprivation, among ohter causes. I have these occasionally. Usually, I believe that I am lying in my bed and someone enters the room to attack me. I cannot scream or move — I am paralyzed. This phenomenon is actually quite common. It occurs when the mind wakes from REM sleep but the normal body paralysis persists, so you are consicous but unable to move. People used to think that demons were sitting on their chests stealing their souls, and that’s why they could not move.

I have recently learned about segmented sleep. Before there was electricity, people often went to bed at dark and stayed there until dawn. In the winter, this could mean spending 12 hours of the day in bed. After a period of deep sleep, they often awoke a few hours before falling back asleep again. This period might be like a meditative period, relaxing and pleasant. It was even a time for reflection, prayer, talking, visiting and making love. I like the idea of a middle-of-the-night quiet period. Unfortunately, I don’t get several more hours to sleep after a period of insomnia, as I have things to do in the mornings.

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Posted in Notebook

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Watch those viral videos disappear: Some thoughts on copyright paranoia

Posted on July 30, 2009 | 5 Comments
Copyright symbol
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If there is any right more misunderstood and more abused than the right to free speech, I believe it is copyright. It doesn’t help that copyright law is insanely complicated and has become conflated over time into a grotesque overprotection for big corporations’ stranglehold on intellectual property, rather than what Thomas Jefferson originally intended it to be: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” What Jefferson actually intended was to provide an incentive to creative persons to make their work public by enabling them to earn something from their work for a time, after which it time it would enter the public domain and thus enrich all of human knowledge. I know, crazy, right? This is America and there’s money to be made, so screw human knowledge.

Of course the corporate world quakes in their underpants at all of the flagrant copyright violating occurring in the Wild West that is the Interwebs. I mean, people are posting videos of their toddlers dancing to Prince songs. However will Prince earn a decent living with that going on? In many cases, it seems that these exuberant pursuits of copyright violating are way too exuberant. Take, for example, my current favorite Keyboard Cat video, which has had the soundtrack removed due to copyright violation. Leaving alone the notion that the sound violates copyright while the accompanying video is perfectly okay (scratching head at the logic behind that one), Keyboard Cat is clearly parody, which falls under fair use. And I’m not just saying that. There is such a thing as fair use — you can look it up.

Besides, videos like this one could actually help some flagging careers. (When was the last time you even heard of Hall & Oates?) Take that wedding dance video that has recently gone viral. Chris Brown was struggling with some minor publicity troubles, but now all is forgiven and his song is getting record downloads because of some cutesy home video that got posted on YouTube. Copyright, shmopyright — he’s raking in some dollars now.

Even when there are legitimate copyright violations, such as when the clip of the brilliant William Shatner reading Sarah Palin’s resignation speech on Conan O’Brien was reposted everywhere, it doesn’t make much sense to have it taken down (which NBC very quickly did). It’s a 6-minute clip from a television show — it’s not going to keep anyone from watching Conan or his advertisers. In fact, it may just help get viewers for the show. Publicity agencies bend over backwards to come up with dumb tricks that they hope will result in a viral video that will promote their movie or TV show, and often it lamely backfires. When you’ve got a genuine viral phenomenon on your hands, don’t look it in the mouth, is my advice.

The Interwebs is officially out of your control, corporate America. You can’t stop all those crazed fans from loving on your content and wanting to share it with their mailmen and former kindergarten teachers on Facebook. So why fight it? Surely you can figure out a way to make money off of it instead. Isn’t that what you do best?

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Posted in Quickies

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Every year for Thanksgiving weekend, my mother and stepfather rent a house in the North Carolina mountains where they and all the children can gather. We drive up on Friday morning after spending Thanksgiving with other family members. We cook … Continue reading →

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Posted on December 1, 2008

Responses to my iGoogle review and thoughts on Google support

Posted on October 20, 2008 | 2 Comments

A couple of days ago, I posted a review of the new iGoogle, which I mostly liked except for a few bugs, and I got a lot of response. (A lot of response for this humble blog, anyway.) All of the commenters completely disagreed with me.

But I noticed something else in common with all the comments: frustration. I don’t think that frustration stems from the new iGoogle so much as the way Google rolled out the changes and the lack of options Google gives its users.

For one thing, Google makes it nearly impossible to give feedback or request support on their free services. Their official blog doesn’t even take comments. My husband has been trying to make a relatively simple change to his Gmail, and not only does Google not allow the change, but they provide no way for him to get in touch with them to request the change or ask for help.

Well, Google is a free service. They don’t have to offer support.

I think that’s wrong. I use several free Web tools that offer excellent support. WordPress.com always responds in a timely and helpful way to my support emails. Hiveminder provides an option for reporting bugs or requesting features right on their interface. I have tweeted about problems I’m having with a software program and gotten an unexpected response from the software developers who are monitoring Twitter. Similarly, I have blogged about free tools, and the developers, who are obviously keeping on top of the blogs, have come by and commented.

Why doesn’t Google do this? Is it just too big? One of the reasons I blogged about iGoogle was because I had found a couple of pretty serious bugs, and I had no other outlet for reporting them.

People are pretty ticked off with Google for the changes made to iGoogle. The changes were made suddenly, without notice. There is no choice between old style and new style. And there is no way to let Google know directly how you feel. No wonder there is so much frustration.

I know Google is a monolith, but I think there is an opportunity here for a company that offers free services comparable to Google’s quality and is in touch with — and actually listens to — its users. Right now, the sense I get is that Google completely discounts its users — at least, its non-paying users — and that won’t cut it on today’s web. No company can afford to ignore any of their customers.

Google may think they’re too big to care about the users of its free services. I think they’ll fiind out they’re wrong.

Please keep the conversation going, and tell me what you think in the comments.

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Posted in Geeking Out

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Some thoughts on burnout…

Posted on October 23, 2007 | Leave a comment

Burnout is a topic I frequently revisit here. That’s because, in my job, I perpetually feel on the edge of burning out. I also have the pleasure of watching my colleagues burn out on a regular basis. The insidious thing about nonprofit work — which no one tells you when you’re in that idealistic, “I want to give up a big corporate salary and do some real good” phase — is that the culture of nonprofits actively promotes burnout, especially in its younger employees.

Is this culture pervasive at your nonprofit? Employees are given lots of leave but not a lot of support in taking leave and often feel like they can’t justify taking it. Employees are encouraged, rewarded for or perhaps even expected to work long hours for no overtime, especially when traveling. Job responsibilities are completely out of proportion to what a normal person can expect to accomplish in 40 hours per week. There is a culture, unspoken or spoken, that the mission is more important than employees’ personal lives and that employees should sacrifice for the higher goals the nonprofit is trying to bring about.

For further reading on this topic see:

And a special gift for your burnt out colleagues…

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Posted in Notebook

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Thoughts on telecommuting…

Posted on March 10, 2007 | Leave a comment

As part of my plan to better deal with my work stress, I have been telecommuting two days a week. I still see a lot of resistence to telecommuting from both employees and employers. For employers, I believe it’s a control issue — if they can’t see you, how do they know you’re working? Actually, you’re more likely to be productive away from the office, where there are fewer distractions and you can tailor your work schedule to your natural rhythms. Telecommuting has helped me segment my work into focus days (at home), meeting and teaming days (at the office), and review and planning day (Friday, when I go into the office but no one else does).

Another issue with telecommuting is that it might make it harder to advance in your career because your face time is reduced. This is a danger now, but I feel like a tipping point will come when telecommuting and virtual teaming are simply an accepted way to work. For now, I think you should only consider telecommuting when career advancement is not as important to you as achieving balance and managing your workload better. I personally don’t really want to climb any higher up the ladder. As far as I can tell, all that means is longer hours, more stress and more travel; the small bump in salary just isn’t worth it to me.

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Posted in Notebook

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