Tom's blog

Unexpected consequences.

We own a mini-van. It is the best vehicle we have ever owned (at least from my point of view), everything opens, the seat's lie flat in the floor and it holds 7 people when you need it to.

The manufacturers included a really cool feature called "Stow 'n Go" seating. This is a bucket under the floor into which the seats fold up and stow. It has a a solid cover too. When the seats are up, this area can be used for storage. Cool feature...but there are some unexpected consequences with it also.

I took it to the local car cleaning place to was and vacuum it. Trying to do the best job, I opened the cover and uuuugggghhhh!. We have two you children, everything they eat when we are on the go, at least a small portion of it seems to have ended up being stowed in this bucket. It was nasty!. Most of it was a little too big for the vacuum to inhale and consequently I had to pick it all out by hand. Gross!

Heres an idea, given that 90% of the people who buy mini-vans, are families with young children, why not put a little liner in there. You can just pick it up and dump it in the trash. Make it out of rubber or a solid plastic, then I can wash it too. Now you would have thought the geniuses at Chrysler would have thought of that, given the market.

I officially rename "Stow 'n Go" seating to "Science Experiment" seating. It is written, it is done.

Technorati Tags: business, commercial, innovation, life, Minivan, Chrysler, storage

NO! I don't want to be your friend.

Here is an interesting phenomenon that, if you have used any of the social networking sites ( Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or similar ) you may well have experienced.

Being "Friended" by someone that you don't want to be "Friended" by.

Most of these sites are quite polite in the way in which this happens, which is sort of the problem. Someone discovers your FaceBook profile and hit's the add friend button. Boom! you have an email asking you for authorization, for most of these requests the reply is easy.

Now the dilemma, there are some people who you just don't want in your friend network, or that you have to interact with on a daily basis that just shouldn't see the picture of you and your you and your drunken friend in Canada...you know the picture I'm talking about. But I digress, suppose your boss tries to "friend" you. You could accept, and your whole social networking alter ego is now open to your new friend granting some intimacy never meant for office consumption. Or you could decline, and they get a polite email telling them that do don't want them in your circle, possibly damaging your working relationship from there on out.

I guess part of the problem is that you can't really separate your online life between personal and professional. At some point it all ends up in that great big melt pot called Google (Have you ever googled yourself?) and then everything is open for public consumption.

This leads to another question, if you are an aspiring college student or advancing in your career, would you want this sort of "social" information to be seen, read and used to judge your potential by a prospective employer? A lot of people seem to sanitize their profiles when they go through these sorts of life changes, which doesn't say much for their authenticity or moral character I suppose.

I imagine it's going to be sometime before the real implications of having so much personal, unsanitary information out on the information superhighway are evident. Unfortunately the event that causes awareness of that state might not be a good one for some of us.

Technorati Tags: creativity, facebook, getting things done, google, gtd, happiness, life, linkedin, list, mac, myspace, pc, social networking, youtube

Happy St. Patrick's day (no calls please)

Today is St. Patrick's day, a whole lot of people will most likely proceed to the nearest pub (or bar) and promptly drink themselves to oblivion. Most likely a good portion of these drunks will paint some part of their body, hair or something else bright green. Hmmmm...I wonder where the history goes on this one.

WikiPedia on the topic seems to indicate that Saint Patrick was actually a poor Englishman, living sometime around 400AD who spent some year's in slavery, escaped, became a Bishop, travelled to Ireland and spent time there as a missionary. I guess he was pretty successful at it, because they made him the Patron Saint of Ireland. However, no where in the text does it talk about St. Patrick painting part of his body green or him drinking to excess once a year.

The holiday was kicked up in the 17th century by a Franciscan guy called Luke Wadding (another Englishman) who somewhat randomly started an Irish college in Salamanca, Spain and then promptly retired to Italy.

This particular holiday as steadily evolved from a day of feasting to a day of complete drunken stupidity with parades, painting yourself and things like the rivers being coloured green.

On a separate but possibly related note, I was traveling on business this week and while out to dinner with a couple of folks, we were regaled with tales of their local parties down at the beach houses. This is where I heard of an interesting concept that I have not been exposed to before, The Drunk Dial. Apparently this occurs after copious amounts of alcohol have been consumed and at ridiculous hours of the morning.

Some research on this topic reveals that it's a widespread phenomenon and it even has it's own web site Drunk Dial . ORG where people can report tails of their drunk dialing exploits. These guys are even running a (St. Patricks Day contest).

The closest I have ever come to something like this is the "Emergency Room Dial" where I have called people to explain why their boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse is now being repaired after having gotten drunk and breaking themselves. Perhaps I should have let the drunk one call, then it would have been a drunk-dial.

So to summarize, a couple of really well intentioned Englishmen did some really good things, resulting in a national holiday, that now results in millions of people drinking way too much (often covered in green paint) of which probably a good proportion will go home and drunk-dial someone else. Kinda weird how things turn out...

Happy St. Patricks everyone...don't call me after 10pm unless your in the emergency room that is, everyone else call (800) 734 0880 and leave your drunk dial there.

TC.

Technorati Tags: Drinking, Funny