Category: Thoughts

Experiments, Random Ideas, and posts that don’t fit other categories.

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That Time I went to a Christian Rock Concert

Even though I was raised Roman Catholic, my family was not overly religious. Sure my mom made us go to church on Sunday and yes, I was an alter-boy (please refrain from the sexual molestation jokes – I was a fat kid, the priests weren’t into me).

Looking back, I feel like any of my religious activities at the time had more to do with my Italian heritage and South Philadelphia neighborhood than any feelings about faith or God. By the time I was in 6th grade (11ish), I had pretty much written off Christianity, but I kept it to myself until I was in high school.

While I spent most of my “family time” with my Dad’s side, my mom’s sister held a special place in my heart. She was (and is) very independent, odd, and a DEVOUT Catholic. It didn’t seem strange to me at the time, but as I got older, my Aunt became more immersed/dependent on the church.

The summer that I turned 12 she told me she had a very special birthday present for me (she usually indulged my obsession with electronics). Since my birthday was at the end of the summer, I was left waiting almost the entire 12 weeks for my gift. At some point I found out it was on a specific date, so I knew we were going to a place.

Finally the day arrived and my Mom volunteered to drive the three of us. We were in the car for what seemed like hours and finally we pulled into a very pleasant looking place (farm like in appearance – open fields, barns, etc) and then I spotted the ENORMOUS WOOD CROSS.

My exact words: “Oh Shit”

My mom pulled into the parking area and this place was packed. We were late, but I could see kids everywhere. They all had purple and blue shirts on with crosses on it. I could tell that they were not the Catholic flavor of Christian that I was familiar with which made the situation (in my mind) even worse.

I shot a nasty look to my mother and she communicated with her eyes that she had no idea what was going on. Knowing how her sister operates, I believed her. My aunt was already out of the car and pre-introducing me to these creepily polite kids. I walked up and exchanged pleasantries (translation: I was a total asshole) and they invited me into a retrofitted barn. I walked behind them looking back to see if my mother and aunt were following (I didn’t want to be abducted into their cult) – as I passed the massive barn door, I saw a stage.

“Get me the **** out of here”

I am a music snob now and I was a music snob then. Christian rock did not exist in my mind as a viable musical genre (it still doesn’t). I see my mother and aunt peering into the door (they being the only Italian looking people in the establishment besides myself, everyone else looked like they walked off the set of “Children of the Corn”),

I start to walk back to them and my aunt holds up her hand and says “just give it a chance”.
Me: “No.”
Aunt: “You might like it since you love music.”
Me: “That’s exactly why I won’t.”

I could see that I might have cut a little too deep on that last line so I relented and sat down. The Children of the Corn started telling me about the clown that was about to play and I nodded and thought of better times. The guy comes on stage and is rocking 80’s era Richard Marx quaffed hair and even has the pierced ear with long dangling earring. Opening chord rings…

I sit through three songs.

The Children of the Corn are swaying and holding hands. The musician is singing about his deep Jesus Love…. I walk out. My aunt looks at me with disappointment, as my Mom has this amused look on her face – no doubt she enjoyed my suffering at the hands of the uber-Christians as cosmic retribution for some other act of defiance.

As we walked out of the barn, a tall lanky looking fellow stops us, “Aren’t you enjoying the show?” My aunt starts to engage this man in conversation, trying to explain away my “unexpected” bout of good taste. Soon enough they start passing bible quotations between each other. I look at my mother, who is equally ready to get the hell out of this nightmare (although she would never admit it), and she politely reminds my aunt that we are leaving. My aunt who I now know is exacting her own revenge on me continues to chat away with this fellow until he turns his attention to me.

“Didn’t enjoy the show?” I will admit that during my pre-teen years I could be a rude little snot. I considered my silence at that point an act of extreme restraint. I looked at this tall bastard and said “This is not a show, it is a membership drive.” He just looked at me, I am sure thinking I was destined for a life of sadness. My mother and aunt did and quickly escorted me to the car before I could inflict further damage or embarrassment. The ride home was very silent.

In the 12 weeks leading up to this “surprise”, I bragged and taunted my sister as (to my knowledge) she wasn’t included (I assume she didn’t need to go because she didn’t “reject the church”), so now I was stewing because I would have to tell her what went down.

We walk into my grandmother’s (who was watching my sister): “How was it?” she asks as she flipped through a gossip magazine. “Christian Rock Concert.” She looks at me and starts laughing hysterically. She was right to laugh – who gets tricked into going to a Christian Rock Concert? Me. That’s who.

(I don’t think the dude was Michael W. Smith, but he was trying his best to be him)

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Thoughts on Working from Home

It’s the American dream: roll out of bed, put on your slippers, and start your work day. Your commute can be as short as reaching over to your night-stand, grabbing your laptop, and turning it on. Almost any worker would love to be able to work from home and an ever increasing number of companies are allowing their workers to do it. Being a frequent remote worker, let’s talk about the pros and cons for corporations and for the workers

PROS:

  • Workers have more flexibility with home/work life. Theoretically, this enable workers to be more productive. The ever decreasing line between home and work becomes almost invisible (which isn’t for the weak at heart).

  • Reduced office overhead: Reduction in real estate needs, network strain, office equipment, office supplies

  • Reduced stress on transportation: Less traffic on the roads, less people on the trains

  • Better labor pool for organizations (essentially every market)

  • Privacy: Assuming you are working alone at home in a home office, you can be a loud as you want, have conversations on speaker phone, don’t have to worry about offending someone sharing a cubical wall with you

  • Better tools: My monitor is better at home, my chair, keyboard, and phone are all better in quality and functionality. Hell, my internet connection is MUCH faster at home. If I could use my own PC, that would also be better.

  • Reduced Costs: In a time where companies aren’t giving out raises and are given no options to reward employees – working from home allows workers to save money on travel (gas, train fees, parking, wear on your car), food (I buy when I am in the office), and clothes.

  • Not involved in rumor-mongering

CONS:

  • Less face-to-face time inhibits team building

  • As a worker, if you are not seen and heard – are you being forgotten? (See the last few paragraphs)

  • Invites the possibility of massive slacking

  • You aren’t as informed of issues/chatter that might impact your job

  • Infrastructure cost: VPN and virtual desktop infrastructure like Citrix are needed so workers can actually work (I have a whole counter point this issue, but I will save it for another article)

The last two years I have found myself working from home more often and it is most definitely a perk to my current job that I enjoy a great deal, but with great power comes great responsibility. Many managers fear that their employees are sitting at home and performing personal tasks and errands instead of working. I cannot speak for other remote users, but allow me to share insight into my remote work day:

6:45 AM – 7:30 AM: Eat breakfast, catch up on personal email, get my mind ready for the work day
7:30 AM – 9:00 AM: I start my day and catch up on emails and paperwork
9:00 AM – Noon: I am in a block of teleconference meetings during this period – EVERY DAY
Noon – 1 PM: Assuming I don’t have a lunch time meeting, I will go to the gym
1:00 – 2:00 PM: This is the witching hour for project managers – I don’t know why.
2:00 – 4:00 PM: More Meetings
4:00 – 5:00 PM: People don’t seem to set meetings at this time as they are leaving the office, I typically catch up on emails
5:00 – 6:00 PM: I cook dinner and eat with my wife
6:30 – 8:00 PM: I typical check emails, speak with my manager who is finally coming up for air, and do any reports/paper work that I need to get done.

10 hour work day every single day. Some days I don’t leave my desk for 8-10 hours. Slacking? I don’t think so. Now let’s review a day in the office.

NOTE: I car-pool with my wife unless there is a situation that would warrant me driving another car to the same location, because of this, I am on her schedule the days I go into the office because she has more specific requirements around when she has to be in and when she can leave.

5:50 AM – 6:30 AM – Wake up and get ready to go to the office
6:30 AM – 7:10 AM – Traveling to the train station (this can take 20-40 minutes depending on traffic)
7:10 AM – 7:45 AM – Take train into the city, walk to office building
7:45 AM – 8:15 AM – Get PC started, open email, run down to the cafeteria to get breakfast (oatmeal if you were wondering)
8:15 AM – 9:15 AM – Conversations: either in the cafeteria or people coming to their desks, the good morning hellos and water cooler talk starts. I am usually 5 minutes late to my 9 AM
9:00 AM – Noon: Same block of meetings
Noon – 1:00 PM: Lunch (typically at my desk answering emails)
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Same block of meetings
4:00 PM – 5:15 PM: Travel home
5:00 PM – 6:15 PM – Gym
6:15 PM – 7:15 PM – Dinner
7:15 PM – On: Veg out on the couch

I am much less productive on the days that I go into the office and I am far less inclined to come home and sign in after a long day (and I don’t have kids to deal with – which is another point I will get to). A major productivity impact is the office environment itself: I have to be concerned about volume control (I am loud, everyone around me lets me know…), who is overhearing sensitive job related conversations in the isle (which often forces me into hiding in conference rooms or un-used offices). When I don’t put myself in a private location, I am often interrupted on calls from people stopping by to ask questions or just to say hi – this is a perspective that people who have had offices for years tend to forget (it’s easy to have an open door policy when you know it can be closed and people will respect that). All that complaining aside, working from home is most definitely a privilege – and like any privilege, it shouldn’t be abused. A worker shouldn’t run out for 2 or 3 hours at a time and not be accessible without telling anyone. W@h shouldn’t be used for daycare: to this point, when I have children, I will be going into the office every day. A child cannot understand why you can’t talk to them during a teleconference and I don’t want to have to explain it, that’s when it’s time to give up the dream (at least until they are in school).

The managerial fear of workers abusing the remote office is strong. In my experience, managers seem to think that if a worker isn’t in the office, they aren’t working. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are people who abuse the system, but I am willing to bet they would have performance issues in or out of the office. If someone isn’t getting their work done, revoke their right to work remotely – its that simple. The same managers who worry about their employees not being on-site are usually stuck on the phone all day themselves, barely leaving their offices and most definitely not out shaking hands and kissing babies, what value does it add to manager or worker? Managers need to resolve their trust issues and have confidence in their ability to adjust to managing remote workers. There has been a 74% increase in remote work since 2005,there are now 17 million people telecommuting at least once a week and 20.7 million people working part time and starting business in their homes, remote work is not a fad, and should be a means for a company to reduce costs to off-set rising operational increases and health insurance costs.

Just because you can work from home all week, doesn’t mean you should. Assuming you don’t live hundreds of miles from your home office, you should set up a schedule with your team and manager so you are all in the office at the same time. Once or twice a week is really enough to “feel like part of the team” and getting the benefits from remote office. The hybrid approach allows companies to save on real estate if they go to a “hotel-office” set-up, where people come in and work in unassigned cubes. In my opinion, this is absolutely the best possible work arrangement.

The corporate world is at an interesting crossroads: Personal and home-based technology is surpassing the tools available in the work place. Companies that need to lock down their employees due to security risk concerns are not keeping up with productivity and communication tools that are revolutionizing the way people function in the other areas of their lives. In many cases these tools are free (I know this is a security issue for most companies), or have very low cost secure pay models that have little to no downside (I am looking at you Google apps). The corporate world needs to get a handle on what is going on with technology and how people work because they are letting money fly out the door by paying for tools that just don’t work as well as low-cost alternatives. I am mentioning these tools because they will only further-enable the remote worker revolution.

More to come true be-loggers.

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Would I let my daughter date Lloyd Dobler?

NOTE: Lloyd Dobler is a fictional character from the movie “Say Anything”. If you haven’t seen the movie, turn on the crappy free movie channels that your cable provider offers, I am sure it will be on. Go ahead, I will wait. If you can’t find it, here is a decent synopsis by the late great Gene Siskel

Since the holiday season, I have noticed the 1989 teen romance flick “Say Anything” has been broadcast in constant rotation. Sometimes I watch it, other times I pass, but over my lifetime, I must have watched this film at least 40 times. I first came across Say Anything before my teenage years, wasting my summer away watching early morning USA network block of youth-focused movies (No Class Movie Daze). I returned to the film the year I graduated high school, coming away with a much better understanding of the characters and developed a long-held appreciation for the character of Lloyd Dobler.

Turning 30, my focus is far away from teenage movies and my mind often drifts to the probability/possibility of having children (in which I am convinced I will have daughters). What kind of father will I be to my future-made-up daughters? How will I react when they eventually bring boys home? Will I play it cool like my father-in-law? Will I be terrifying like my own father (I didn’t feel much sympathy for my brother-in-law in those days, but he had it on that fateful evening)? Will I be a dismissive asshole like the character John Mahoney played in Say Anything?

As I watch the film as an adult, the charm of the John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler isn’t as universal as it once was (and Diane Court has gone from being slightly annoying to intolerable). Dobler’s whole rant about “not knowing what he wants to do, but knows what he doesn’t want to do” was mind blowing for my 17-year-old self, but now it seems aimless and self-indulgent. I once considered Lloyd’s struggle to find a “dare to be great situation” awesome, and now I understand that I have to attempt to make every moment great. I often wonder how a 45-48 year old me would react to a kid wearing a trench coat telling me he doesn’t want “buy anything, sell anything, process anything sold…” fuck it just check out the clip:

So here we have this dreamer, this “champion of mediocrity” as Mahoney puts it, attempting to date my daughter. Would I be relieved that he was able to form complete sentences (something his peers would probably falter at)? Would I be impressed with his travels? Or would I focus in on the fact that he has no ambitions besides kicking a punching bag and having a creepy stalker-style situation happening with my daughter. How pissed off would I be when this kid pulls up behind my house and starts blasting a poor man’s version of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to get her attention?

It mildly depresses me that a character that I held in high regard at 17, I view as a bit of a fuck-up in the “twilight of my youth” (thank you Ryan Adams). While I find it disturbing that I can empathize with Mahoney’s Jim Court, I can’t help but think he had the right reaction to Lloyd: Dobler followed his daughter to London, and let’s face it, you know she isn’t going to get the full experience of her educational opportunity with Lloyd to come home to every night. He is going to ride her coat-tales until she figures out that too many punches to the head has caused minor brain damage, limiting Lloyd’s job choices. Diane will realize that she has wasted her youth on a functionally retarded adult and leave him sad and lonely (and in the rain). Maybe he will get lucky and some emo girl will find his plight endearing and let him cut the soup line.

God damn-it… I sold out.

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I reached my goal!

In August of this year, Google trending reported at least one person from every state in the US had visited my blog except three. I made it a goal on that day to get someone from those three states to come and visit the site, and I am pleased to say that has happened.

I want to thank everyone who has read the blog and checked out the other websites this year. I do this because I enjoy it and I hope you do too.

I guess next year is a completely green global map? Not sure if all of those white spaces have internet access regularly (but I am going to find out). I am glad people are out there reading. Thanks for a great 2009. Hope you stick around for 2010.

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Seasons Greetings Joey Style (2009)

Happy New Year (and new decade) friends! Can you believe a whole year has past since the last time I filled your in-boxes with nonsense? I am glad we are all here again this year, and I hope you are reading this in comfort and with a few moments of peace – because we are all certainly entitled to that. I struggled getting this little love note going this year – struggled not to repeat myself, but repetition helps us remember the important things. With that in mind, sit back, relax and let me kick it for you Soap-Box style….

[MOTIVATIONS]

I went back and read all of the Season’s Greetings I could find (5 years worth) and my common theme seems to be motivation. Every year I try to motivate myself and my readers into some form of self improvement. This year I have been thinking about motivations, why do we “do what we do” instead of what we “want to do”?

What makes us get out of bed in the morning?
Why do we stress over those reports that the boss wants done ASAP?
Why don’t we go all “Tiger Woods” and find ourselves a few billion extra-marital lovers?
What stops us from going on a shooting spree?

Fear. Fear is an enormous motivator for me. I am afraid that if I don’t do well at work I will lose my job, if I am not a good person I will lose my wife or friends. I marvel at how the faint smokey taste of fear flavors my decisions. How much of your routine is planned with avoiding the consequences of bad decisions – the fear of “what if”? I don’t think I am alone in the fear, but has society always been this afraid or is the abundance of information making it worse?

During Xmas festivities with my wife’s relatives, I was talking with her aunt about an article I read about the lack of freedom children have in modern times. We don’t allow children to ride bikes alone or go to the corner store (if they even exist) because we are afraid that someone would take them. But child abductions have remained constant at around 110-115 since the 1950’s. Why are we suddenly so afraid to let children have unstructured freedom? My guess would be scary media reports, internet, reports from “experts”.

Are we raising a new generation to be afraid of everything? Is that a good thing or debilitating? As technology improves, we aren’t too far from never having to leave the house. It would be like that Surrogates movie except there won’t be robots, we will just have empty streets. When I think about my own life, the best moments happened when I control my fears… fear of rejection, fear of what people think, fear of losing – sometimes what I feared actually happened, but it wasn’t too bad and I am still here, better for having gone through it.

Now I am thinking of an “olde time” commercial… “Now you too can be large and in charge* with FEAR AWAY! Just take two shots of this brown liquid that smells exactly like whiskey and watch your fear vanish! You get the complete kit for a low $99.99! (* model prostitutes not included)”

[RESOURCES]

In last year’s address I mentioned the global dependence on oil. I have expanded my thoughts to resources in general. America is a consumer and service based economy and the world is following our example. I see a short rope wrapped around our collective necks and we are getting ever so close to hanging ourselves. Let me see if I can break down my thoughts:

  • America is out of the business of production – we don’t make shit anymore – we just buy it
  • Those production jobs left this country and are helping to develop a middle class in other nations
  • As we are seeing with India, once a middle class is established, those people no longer want to make shit either – they want to sit in air conditioned offices and do non-productive corporate work like their American counterparts
  • Now there are a lot more people who want to buy useless shit, so another country – like China – is making useless shit cheaply and dangerously to meet the demand
  • As China becomes more industrialized their demand for oil and coal rises, America and other develop nations need for oil does not decline – so there are more nations in demand for a dwindling resource – this will end well I am sure
  • All of this cheap, hazardous stuff that nobody really needs eventually ends up in the Ocean, the Ocean becomes plastic
  • As the Ocean becomes a toxic cesspool with broken toys and old Clorox bottles floating in the patina, the food chain becomes irrevocably broken
  • As this is happened the world collectively realizes that clean fresh water supplies are dangerously in short supply (don’t worry America – we actually have a decent supply, you will just be paying major $$$ for bottled water)
  • Now we will need plastic bottles to ship the water – you need oil to make plastic – and someone to make the plastic cheaply – and somewhere to put the used bottles – and we are back to the beginning

America and the world collectively needs to get their shit together when it comes to renewable resources, waste management, CO2 in the atmosphere, and the careers that are considered valuable. The governments are not going to anything until we have reached the point of no return, so it’s up to us. Vote with these topics in mind and don’t get side-tracked by the bullshit issues. Encourage renewable resources in your town and don’t be one of those “not in my back yard” assholes. Make sure the stuff you use doesn’t go to waste (As I type that, I have 4 full trash bags of food I tossed from Christmas Eve festivities – so who needs to get off of their high horse?).

[2010]

I am going to repeat what I have said every year since I started doing these messages: Make next year better for yourself any way you can. Make yourself better any way you can. Last year I said I wanted to focus on guitar lessons – and I did. I got a little bit better and learned to play one of my favorite songs of all time. As an added bonus, I made a new friend and neighbor (HiGTT!). Good things happen when you try to improve yourself and get out of your little box.

This year my plan is to take the GMATs and buckle down on a master’s degree. I don’t have the highest opinion of the educational system at the moment (hmmm…. got a good rant on that coming up), but I want to give it the chance to redeem itself. Perhaps redemption should be a theme in 2010 as well. New decade, bury old grudges and useless thoughts. Can you think of something or someone you have totally washed your hands of – is there a second chance in its/their future? Should there be?

2010 could potentially be the start of my immediate family’s baby boom as my sister will have her first child. Seeing the restraint she has been practicing the last 5 months, ensuring every advantage she can for her child has been inspiring. I am excited and proud of big my sister and brother-in-law, and look forward to the changes their baby brings to their life and my own.

We have a new decade to define ladies and gentlemen. Let’s try to do better than the last ten years of vapid reality-tv celebrities, economic meltdowns, upskirt shots, war, useless people cheating on their wives, lying media, and the biggest moron ever elected to office.

The bar is pretty low to make an improvement people – but we still have to give an honest effort.

[THANKS]

The thank you section of this address has as become a logistical nightmare. Simply put: Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I usually start this off by thanking my parents, and for an outsider reading this – it is simple and perfectly disconnected. I thought I would try something different this year: My father learned to use his cell phone this year. That might not be a big deal to normal people, but for a man that doesn’t speak, this is a fascinating paradox. The first time he called me, I was in the middle of a tele-conference and actually dropped off because I thought something is wrong. He just wanted to know if I wanted any meat from the butcher shop. The man called me to see if I wanted something – old school doesn’t do it justice. My mother is no slouch by any means – she calls me every day to see if I need or want something. It is mind-boggling to me to see how supportive my parents are in their own stoic and silent way: nothing flashy, just always there in the background. So in all seriousness – Thank You Mom and Dad.

Not trying to ignore my wife by putting her in second (the story about my dad was just a better transitional sentence). Allison is the person who is saddled with anal retentive insanity 24/7. She not only handles it with grace (most of the time) but she gets me out of crazy place. She is an endless source of entertainment and laughs and I am very glad she is my wife and for the life we are building together. YAM!

I struggled with doing mass thank yous because I don’t want to take it away from people who deserve thanks. But I really don’t want to turn this into the “10 minute thank you speech at the Oscars”. Hopefully, I said thank you in person, and if I didn’t, you have my full permission to call me a ungrateful asshole the next time we talk. With that out of the way, I genuinely want to thank the people in my life for being there:

Thank you for answering my phone calls and listening to my insanity for a few minutes
Thank you keeping me company on long drives and dealing with crappy blue tooth speakers
Thank you for giving me advice that I over-analyze to the point of nausea
Thank you for our daily IM conversations that make the work day much better
Thank you for coming over and helping me move stuff around my house and off the deck
Thank you for suggesting new books, movies, and music
Thank you India (Just making sure you are paying attention)
Thank you for the recipes, the cooking gear, and finding new ways for me to destroy my kitchen
Thank you for helping to find back-splash tile (and eventually doing the tile work) – Hi “Woody!” 😉
Thank you for reading my blog because it really makes me happy that people do
Thank you all for allowing me to live a satisfying and meaningful life – because without you, it wouldn’t be.

In 2010, be the master of your own destiny.

Love,
Joey

Previous Holiday Greetings:
2008 – Click Here
2007 – Click Here
2006 – Click Here
2005 – Click Here
2004 – Click Here
(Sorry before 2004, the Greetings were email based and I lost them all – so if you have them… send ’em my way and I will republish)