I don't care what anyone says - I am in favor of cubicles.
Ever since I abandoned my childhood dreams of various careers that earn NO money (seriously, I had three career plans and ALL of them pay horribly) I have wanted to be a cubicle drone. While some see the comic strip Dilbert and think it's a horrible existence to live in a little box typing away and slaving for "the man" - I see it as a great idea and something to strive to attain in the future. Office Space was a great movie about a horrible business and horrible office with horrible bosses - but the cubicles still seemed to interest me.
I guess it's the comfort level for me. I'm not used to wide open spaces. I have a four-room two-bedroom apartment and rarely am I seen outside of my tiny room. Give me a computer, somewhere to sit, and somewhere to sleep (if it's my bedroom, not necessarily my cube - though a nap zone would be nice) and I'm a moderately-content guy. Even better is the ownership of the cubicle. The desk is mine to organize however I choose. The walls are mine to pin up things to keep me motivated or entertained. And my time is my own.
I know that my ideal cubicle situation involves an ideal WORK/BUSINESS situation, but it's my dream and that's what I want. I want a job where I can work in my cubicle at my own pace - which is faster when I have less distractions of people interrupting my work to give me different work. The ideal is having a set list of tasks to complete every day/week and allowing me to complete the work by the deadlines without interference. The cubicle would enhance that awesomeness, allowing me the peace and quiet I need to calculate and figure out new shortcuts and ways to improve on things. It's usually in my downtime between projects that I'm the most creative and able to piece together things to create new solutions to existing problems. Plus, earlier in the day is better than later in the day, but there have been tons of studies proving that already.
Employees are most productive and more creative in the mornings than in the afternoons.
So why the sudden rant about cubicles? Well, my office has been remodeled once again. Luckily I was not moved in the process, but the surroundings were moved and it's affecting everything yet again. I had about two months of peace and comfort with a cubicle in my time here with this company. We moved to a new office, with a big room of cubicles (though with shorter walls than I'd prefer) and I shared my cube with another worker. Cubicle-sharing isn't that bad, in my opinion - especially when his schedule meant he only worked one shift and I had the whole place to myself for the other shift. I had my own desk I could decorate with my own bric-a-brac and a bulletin wall where I could pin things on my half.
And then I got moved to the other room. I had a window desk with a great view, but in one big room. They put up some spare cubicle walls to separate the two halves of the room, so I had one wall next to me where I could still pin things up, but it wasn't the same. I was in a half-room with three other people and no privacy. Even worse, our room connects to the boss's office. You don't have to read Scott Adams's book (the creator of Dilbert) to understand that proximity to the boss's office is directly correlated with the number of times you're asked to work on a project.
Today, things stepped down yet another notch. I entered the office to find that our room had been remodeled yet again. Our wall divider is now gone, and has been replaced with several extra desks, a few of which directly face our desks. Privacy is gone. I found a pile of my wall decorations placed on my desk, which had previously occupied the now-missing cubicle wall. I no longer have any remnants left of my brief life as a cubie.
I miss my cubicle.
Do you have a cube? Are you a cubie? Don't you wish you had a cubicle? Share!
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Showing posts with label debate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debate. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Food for Thought
Once again, a small offhand comment triggers a mental debate in my head that needs to come outside and play. It started as I pushed away the remains of my Caesar Salad for lunch with a disgusted look on my face.
"Why don't you finish your salad ever?" she asked.
"Because it's disgustingly bland and they use so little dressing," I replied.
"Well, food isn't supposed to be delicious - it's supposed to maintain life," she retorted.
"No," came my reply.
Just "No." Food IS supposed to be delicious. We wouldn't be here (in America) if the facts were any other way. If she were right (and she is not), we would have vitamins and calorie pills and flavorless mush like you read about in bad (and some good) science-fiction pieces. Such is farthest from the case. Sure, some idiots out there choose a bland and flavorless life in order to get nutrients and sustain life and nothing else - but it's just a minute population that it barely is worth mentioning at all.
The rest of us in the normal human race understand that food is supposed to be tasty. That's why we have taste buds in the first place.
Argument #1: A rational deity/entity would not have provided us with taste buds if food were not meant to have taste.
The atheist corrolary to that would be the concept of Nature or chaos theory or something like that. Fact remains that we HAVE taste buds. Ergo, food is meant to have taste. Otherwise we would have evolved to no longer HAVE taste buds. Humans not only have been focus on taste (and its partner in crime, smell) for so long that we recently discovered a new taste: umami. We continue to strive to understand how we taste and what the building blocks of taste are - which we would never have done if food were not meant to be delicious.
Argument #2: Cooking is proof that flavors can be created, enhanced and mixed - which would never have been necessary if food simply needed to be consumed for survival alone.
It's called COOKING. Recipes exist to remember what flavor creations have been created so that they can be replicated. Some are kept secret (something about 11 herbs and spices?) so that others cannot replicate those flavors for themselves. If food were not meant to be delicious, then why would billions of dollars and jobs be dependant on one flavor or recipe being more delicious than another? Why would billions in advertising be spent to compare one taste to another similar taste just to boast about which is more delicious?
Argument #3: Without spices, exploration would have been stagnated.
Spices have always been where the money is. In fact, ever since ancient Rome, spices have been vital to life and prosperity. Salt, for its curing purposes long long before the days of refrigerators, was a freakin' CURRENCY. That's how Roman soldiers were paid - and how the word "salary" came to exist. In fact, a poor soldier was not "worth his salt". As culture progressed, we searched for MORE flavors and spices, not fewer. With each new spice, new trade routes were established and this led to the whole notion of the "faster route to India" and all their lovely spices. Which accidentally led to, well, Columbus and the New World debacle.
I could go on further. I REALLY could. You don't want to mess with a fat guy who enjoys food and goes on a rampage when you insult his food or food in general. Sadly, though, I must get back to work now.
Your thoughts? Read more!
"Why don't you finish your salad ever?" she asked.
"Because it's disgustingly bland and they use so little dressing," I replied.
"Well, food isn't supposed to be delicious - it's supposed to maintain life," she retorted.
"No," came my reply.
Just "No." Food IS supposed to be delicious. We wouldn't be here (in America) if the facts were any other way. If she were right (and she is not), we would have vitamins and calorie pills and flavorless mush like you read about in bad (and some good) science-fiction pieces. Such is farthest from the case. Sure, some idiots out there choose a bland and flavorless life in order to get nutrients and sustain life and nothing else - but it's just a minute population that it barely is worth mentioning at all.
The rest of us in the normal human race understand that food is supposed to be tasty. That's why we have taste buds in the first place.
Argument #1: A rational deity/entity would not have provided us with taste buds if food were not meant to have taste.
The atheist corrolary to that would be the concept of Nature or chaos theory or something like that. Fact remains that we HAVE taste buds. Ergo, food is meant to have taste. Otherwise we would have evolved to no longer HAVE taste buds. Humans not only have been focus on taste (and its partner in crime, smell) for so long that we recently discovered a new taste: umami. We continue to strive to understand how we taste and what the building blocks of taste are - which we would never have done if food were not meant to be delicious.
Argument #2: Cooking is proof that flavors can be created, enhanced and mixed - which would never have been necessary if food simply needed to be consumed for survival alone.
It's called COOKING. Recipes exist to remember what flavor creations have been created so that they can be replicated. Some are kept secret (something about 11 herbs and spices?) so that others cannot replicate those flavors for themselves. If food were not meant to be delicious, then why would billions of dollars and jobs be dependant on one flavor or recipe being more delicious than another? Why would billions in advertising be spent to compare one taste to another similar taste just to boast about which is more delicious?
Argument #3: Without spices, exploration would have been stagnated.
Spices have always been where the money is. In fact, ever since ancient Rome, spices have been vital to life and prosperity. Salt, for its curing purposes long long before the days of refrigerators, was a freakin' CURRENCY. That's how Roman soldiers were paid - and how the word "salary" came to exist. In fact, a poor soldier was not "worth his salt". As culture progressed, we searched for MORE flavors and spices, not fewer. With each new spice, new trade routes were established and this led to the whole notion of the "faster route to India" and all their lovely spices. Which accidentally led to, well, Columbus and the New World debacle.
I could go on further. I REALLY could. You don't want to mess with a fat guy who enjoys food and goes on a rampage when you insult his food or food in general. Sadly, though, I must get back to work now.
Your thoughts? Read more!
Friday, July 27, 2007
Smoking Ban vs Gay Marriage
Before I even get off into my usual slur of bad analogies, half-baked jokes and other things that prevent me from forming a coherent verbal (but not written) sentence before 8am - I have no idea what I'm talking about. You hear that? My opinions on these subjects really don't matter because neither of them really affect me directly. Just like men and abortion rights, we can have an opinion, but we'll be seen as wrong just for having one since it's not our issue and it apparently never will be. Now that this is out of the way, I'll say my peace.
Hopefully at least SOME of you read my last piece, about the new Illinois smoking ban that still allows people to smoke, just nowhere where they'd LIKE to smoke. Like in places where there's shelter from the environment other than their own home. What was GOING to follow was a piece about the new cigarette taxes coming into legislation.
I can't begin to think of a better analog for "adding insult to injury."
Instead, certain reader responses in the RedEye this morning just got me BACK onto this original rant, and I felt I had to add more on because people STILL just don't get it: there should NOT be laws being created to ostracize people just based on the theory that secondhand smoke is really that dangerous. Again, I haven't seen any scientific proof. And even if there were test subjects in controlled environments who got cancer from extreme doses of secondhand smoke, I highly doubt that those experiments would reflect the REAL world, where secondhand smoke isn't that concentrated (even indoors) and the hundreds or thousands of other factors that determine when a person gets which cancer.
But no! The liberals (who, might I remind you, are taking away liberties rather than protecting them) are trying to argue that they can tell you where you can't smoke because they're afraid of dying from secondhand smoke. Fine. If you want to make the argument that a hypothetical scary result that hasn't been factually proven yet can be stopped by one of the things that might trigger it in limited circumstances (a long way of saying "you MIGHT get cancer from POSSIBLY secondhand smoke IF this all happened INDOORS and you ignore everyone OUTDOORS")...
...then I say that you have to also agree with the arguments to ban gay marriage.
That's right, I went there. I went there, took some photos, bought a T-shirt, came back, and showed you boring slideshows of it all. Smoking ban? Gay marriage ban. But why, Aaron? Why would you equate something as silly as not being able to smoke indoors with the lifelong struggle of the gay community to commit to each other for life in a federally-recognized ceremony?
Because it's the same argument being made against gay marriage that was made against smoking indoors: something that could potentially harm in a non-proven way if conditions were met. I'm taking about the "gay marriage destroys families" argument here.
I'm arguing that there's an equal percentage of people trying to prove that this seemingly-unlikely event is what triggered their horrible problem. Trying to pin secondhand smoke as the culprit for lung cancer in non-smokers is just as improbable as pinning gay marriage as the culprit for the lack of value of the sacrament of marriage itself.
After all, while being gay is NOT a choice that can be turned on or off, deciding to couple and deciding to want to get married is TOTALLY a choice. You can be gay and do whatever you want to other gay people for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the institution of marriage, that apparently affects OTHER people in the bond of marriage and some see it as possibly destructive.
Likewise, while nicotine addiction is not as much of a choice (at serious levels of addiction), it is TOTALLY a choice to start smoking. And you can smoke whatever kinds of cigars and cigarettes you want for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the air space of other people indoors, that apparently affects OTHER people in the room and some see it as possibly destructive to their health.
Can you agree on the similarities in the arguments?? One is just as ridiculous as the other! And yet the insane one about SMOKING is easily thrown together as actual legislation by the liberals, while the insane one about GAY MARRIAGE is a rallying point liberals AGAINST the same argument!
Sorry, liberals, but you can't have it both ways. One fauly argument becoming law should equate to more laws backed by the same argument - whether it's something you believe in or not. Smokers believe they have the right to smoke. You argue it threatens the health of others and besides, "smoking is bad for you anyway so maybe this'll help people to quit." Gays believe they have the right to get married. Others argue it threatens the sanctity of marriage and besides, "being gay is morally wrong anyway so maybe this'll help people to get right with God."
Are you starting to see how absurd it all is?
You don't have the right to quash someone's liberties because you're afraid people could get hurt and die. If that were the case all around for everything, people shouldn't be allowed to play sports because there's a high risk of steroid use, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars because they can't be trusted to not crash and kill people, and farmers shouldn't be allowed to grow peanuts anymore because so many people are allergic to them and they kill so many people.
You have the right to defend yourself from imminent danger.
You don't have the right to legislate a ban on anything that could potentially be dangerous.
Because people have the right to do dangerous things - to themselves especially, and potentially to others. You can drink alcohol. You can own a gun. You can drive a car. You can bungee jump and parasail and skydive. You can also smoke a cigarette.
And if people are going to take away that liberty for such a stupid reason, I'm just saying that the things THEY believe they have the liberty to do should be taken away just as easily.
And please don't try to turn this into me being a homophobe or against gay marriage. I have several gay friends and I'm not against gay marriage. If you read this piece properly, you'd see that I'm trying to NOT ban gay marriage by trying to get this smoking ban lifted due to the ridiculous reasoning that brought it into existance. It just usually gets a hot-button topic to get people to actually notice the NOT-hot-button topics.
Read more!
Hopefully at least SOME of you read my last piece, about the new Illinois smoking ban that still allows people to smoke, just nowhere where they'd LIKE to smoke. Like in places where there's shelter from the environment other than their own home. What was GOING to follow was a piece about the new cigarette taxes coming into legislation.
I can't begin to think of a better analog for "adding insult to injury."
Instead, certain reader responses in the RedEye this morning just got me BACK onto this original rant, and I felt I had to add more on because people STILL just don't get it: there should NOT be laws being created to ostracize people just based on the theory that secondhand smoke is really that dangerous. Again, I haven't seen any scientific proof. And even if there were test subjects in controlled environments who got cancer from extreme doses of secondhand smoke, I highly doubt that those experiments would reflect the REAL world, where secondhand smoke isn't that concentrated (even indoors) and the hundreds or thousands of other factors that determine when a person gets which cancer.
But no! The liberals (who, might I remind you, are taking away liberties rather than protecting them) are trying to argue that they can tell you where you can't smoke because they're afraid of dying from secondhand smoke. Fine. If you want to make the argument that a hypothetical scary result that hasn't been factually proven yet can be stopped by one of the things that might trigger it in limited circumstances (a long way of saying "you MIGHT get cancer from POSSIBLY secondhand smoke IF this all happened INDOORS and you ignore everyone OUTDOORS")...
...then I say that you have to also agree with the arguments to ban gay marriage.
That's right, I went there. I went there, took some photos, bought a T-shirt, came back, and showed you boring slideshows of it all. Smoking ban? Gay marriage ban. But why, Aaron? Why would you equate something as silly as not being able to smoke indoors with the lifelong struggle of the gay community to commit to each other for life in a federally-recognized ceremony?
Because it's the same argument being made against gay marriage that was made against smoking indoors: something that could potentially harm in a non-proven way if conditions were met. I'm taking about the "gay marriage destroys families" argument here.
I'm arguing that there's an equal percentage of people trying to prove that this seemingly-unlikely event is what triggered their horrible problem. Trying to pin secondhand smoke as the culprit for lung cancer in non-smokers is just as improbable as pinning gay marriage as the culprit for the lack of value of the sacrament of marriage itself.
After all, while being gay is NOT a choice that can be turned on or off, deciding to couple and deciding to want to get married is TOTALLY a choice. You can be gay and do whatever you want to other gay people for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the institution of marriage, that apparently affects OTHER people in the bond of marriage and some see it as possibly destructive.
Likewise, while nicotine addiction is not as much of a choice (at serious levels of addiction), it is TOTALLY a choice to start smoking. And you can smoke whatever kinds of cigars and cigarettes you want for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the air space of other people indoors, that apparently affects OTHER people in the room and some see it as possibly destructive to their health.
Can you agree on the similarities in the arguments?? One is just as ridiculous as the other! And yet the insane one about SMOKING is easily thrown together as actual legislation by the liberals, while the insane one about GAY MARRIAGE is a rallying point liberals AGAINST the same argument!
Sorry, liberals, but you can't have it both ways. One fauly argument becoming law should equate to more laws backed by the same argument - whether it's something you believe in or not. Smokers believe they have the right to smoke. You argue it threatens the health of others and besides, "smoking is bad for you anyway so maybe this'll help people to quit." Gays believe they have the right to get married. Others argue it threatens the sanctity of marriage and besides, "being gay is morally wrong anyway so maybe this'll help people to get right with God."
Are you starting to see how absurd it all is?
You don't have the right to quash someone's liberties because you're afraid people could get hurt and die. If that were the case all around for everything, people shouldn't be allowed to play sports because there's a high risk of steroid use, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars because they can't be trusted to not crash and kill people, and farmers shouldn't be allowed to grow peanuts anymore because so many people are allergic to them and they kill so many people.
You have the right to defend yourself from imminent danger.
You don't have the right to legislate a ban on anything that could potentially be dangerous.
Because people have the right to do dangerous things - to themselves especially, and potentially to others. You can drink alcohol. You can own a gun. You can drive a car. You can bungee jump and parasail and skydive. You can also smoke a cigarette.
And if people are going to take away that liberty for such a stupid reason, I'm just saying that the things THEY believe they have the liberty to do should be taken away just as easily.
And please don't try to turn this into me being a homophobe or against gay marriage. I have several gay friends and I'm not against gay marriage. If you read this piece properly, you'd see that I'm trying to NOT ban gay marriage by trying to get this smoking ban lifted due to the ridiculous reasoning that brought it into existance. It just usually gets a hot-button topic to get people to actually notice the NOT-hot-button topics.
Read more!
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