Lonnehart wrote:
Just thinking about the Council's behavior in the series. They're informed of the threat, and they refuse to believe what they're told. Thenwhenindeniable evidenceof that threat shows up and they flat out deny and play it down while refusing to give support to combat it. Then when it finally hits them in the face they're ill prepared for it. Were there any real world governments that acted like this? Don't know why, but Pearl Harbor comes to mind…

Pearl Harbor, the Bush and/or Clinton Administration, several Israeli administrations, King George III. Although George kind of gets a little leeway given that communications were so slow at the time he'd just barely found out people were pissed at all by the time they revolted.

On kind of the same note, I really want to make a rant about some of the training in my company lately, but I know I'm not supposed to be criticizing my superiors or the army, so I'm doing my best to keep it to myself. Suffice it to say, I find myself slightly disagreeing with what we're covering as opposed to what I wish we were covering with the privates.

Always cover your privates!

Well, not always. I mean, certainly when you're outside, but by all means if you're indoors feel free to let their covers off.

But yeah. Late night grumpiness always leads to a lack of attention paid to sentence phrasing.

I spent the last three days in Saskatchewan. I left at 5am Friday and just got back.
Had a memorial (although there was almost no one there) and then spent the rest of the time sorting through his files and taking his old stuff to the salvation army. The most draining days I've had in long time, both physically and mentally. On the positive side, I get a decent inheritance and a giant stamp collection.

Lonnehart wrote:
Don't know why, but Pearl Harbor comes to mind…

Modern mythology strikes again. By December 1941 the US had been planning to enter WWII for almost a year with the peacetime draft, Lend-Lease and a huge US Navy building bill that funded the Iowa BBs and Essex Carriers.

Pearl Harbor is a perfect example of hindsight. It was so obvious but only after it happened. And there's no conspiracy, the radio intercepts just weren't good enough yet to put all the pieces together. A pile of the intercepts that made Pearl Harbor even probable weren't decoded until 1945. Just a touch too late.

The Japanese fleet was travelling under a complete radio blackout and behind a weather front. Absent a modern style radar net there was no way their location could have been known or their destination guessed at. It could have been the Philipines as was expected. And why wasn't MacArthur prepared? Incompetence.

Simple incompetence and preparing for the attack that was expected as opposed to what actually arrived. Then there's believing your own good press and having faith in a weapon system as the wonder weapon when it had never actually been tested at doing what it was supposedly capable of doing. Oops, you mean a B-17 isn't the perfect reconaissance and precise anti-fleet bombing platform?

Registration at my school starts tomorrow and it will be really awesome if I got the schedule I want. My school does month long mini-semesters rather than the full 3 month semesters and I have the perfect plan.

For the Summer, I will take one online course that runs from mid May to the begginning of August. It will be my first 100% online course, but that means I don't have to be running around like chicken with it's head cut off and I get all of May of for holiday. Then I will take a class for June and another class for July. I will have almost all of August off for another round of summer break.

For the Fall, I will only take a class for September and October. This gives me November - mid Januarary off for Christmas break. For the Spring, I only have three more classes to take and I will get my MBA in May.

I have it all planned out.
*edit* And I got the schedule I wanted.

Poop-doop-dee-doop!

Good luck little Niccea!!!!!! May your pointy ears steer you towards glorious wealth and good fortune!

————

Work is busy, busy at the moment again… And I wouldn't mind it since I work FAST (unlike my comic stuff), but when multiple things I'm working on at the SAME fricken bloody time keep coming back with fricken revisions it scrambles my brain!!!

I am not a person who can keep complex irrelevant little details from multiple different jobs in his head at the same time and come up with creative solutions to all of them simultaneously. No, my brain does NOT parallel process I'm afraid.

I have to queue up and sort them all mentally and work on them in series, sequentially… They can be shuffled about in any order, but that makes them slower and crapper and makes me bad tempered.

And changing metal gears slows me down even more! if I move from doing mundane stuff to something that requires a lot of creativity it's going to take me a lot longer to get going. And if I go back to mundane stuff then the mundane stuff will slow down.

It's the same for websites - where you have to hold a LOT of stuff in your head at once to work on them (directory structures, file locations, aesthetics of design, all the different HTML and Css tags, the specific code structure of your HTML page template, exactly what content you have to add, all the changes you have to make after to accommodate any change you make now, all the possible methods to do stuff better, all the jobs you still have to do on the site and all the previously mentioned details that goes along with each and every one of them… and so on multiplied.
It's not that bad when you're doing it, it's all just pretty automatic of course… it's just the run up to getting started, especially when you have to stop and do something completely totally different… and then go back to it again T_T

I am not cut out for that sort of stuff in my head/brainial area @_@

ozoneocean wrote:
I am not cut out for that sort of stuff in my head/brainial area @_@

Dirty little secret of the reality of human behavior as opposed to the cloud cuckoo land inhabited by most pointy headed manigerial types: NO ONE CAN, NO one is and anyone who thinks they are or can are living in a fantasy land and will end up with a pile of burned out wrecks and slipshod work!

It's proven in study after study, after study, after study. The evidence is clear. The human mind works sequentially and for best results finish one project before moving on to the next. Some dope first figured this stuff out in the late 19th Century. No one has ever listened and they wonder why the world is so messed up. And just who is they, because whoever they are they deserve the fate of the Terror in the French Revolution.

Put a guilotine in the back of a pick-up and drive from place to place offering hair cuts.

bravo wrote:

quoting ozoneocean:
I am not cut out for that sort of stuff in my head/brainial area @_@

Dirty little secret of the reality of human behavior as opposed to the cloud cuckoo land inhabited by most pointy headed manigerial types: NO ONE CAN, NO one is and anyone who thinks they are or can are living in a fantasy land and will end up with a pile of burned out wrecks and slipshod work!
It's proven in study after study, after study, after study. The evidence is clear. The human mind works sequentially and for best results finish one project before moving on to the next. Some dope first figured this stuff out in the late 19th Century. No one has ever listened and they wonder why the world is so messed up. And just who is they, because whoever they are they deserve the fate of the Terror in the French Revolution.
Put a guilotine in the back of a pick-up and drive from place to place offering hair cuts.

Gee, bravo. It's pathetic how you don't have an opinion on things :P

Actually, there have been studies, make that brain dissections, which strongly indicate that some people have a greater ability to multitask (or parallel process) than others, based on the number of synapses that cross between the right and left hemisphere. The more crossovers, the greater the ability to multitask – and as a general rule, females have more crossovers.

It rather explains how women can be cooking dinner, checking homework, and talking on the phone at the same time, while men generally can't.

I ran across this when I was looking into information about autism. The autistic are extraordinarily linear and sequential thinkers – brain autopsies of the autistic have shown very little crossover, fewer than the average male brain. And, incidentally, autism is far more prevalent with males. I've read 4 out of 5; and I've also read 7 out of 8. Although when autism occurs with females, it is generally more severe in its effects.

so maybe you can continue to garage your guillotine

I seem to recall though that despite the findings that indicate women are better at passing information from one side of the brain to the other there's still quite a few productivity studies that note that multi-tasking is an inerently less productive method of working that focusing on one task at a time. Yes, women can be doing three things, but it's still not all at once, and productivity-wise it will end up taking them longer to finish the tasks than if they did it one at a time. It's a simple point of math, every time you switch tasks, it takes a period of time to make that switch, and if you have 3 tasks that means you can either switch focus 3 times or continually bounce between them 7 times.
That ability to pass info between the hemispheres of the brain only speeds up the process of changing focus. It doesn't eliminate it. No matter what, you only have two eyes to look at things with, and unless you've somehow retaught your brain to use each eye independently of the other, you can only focus on one thing at a time. To use your example, you can't look at the measuring cup in your hand and look at your math book at the same time. You can measure out something, then look at the book, but you can't physically do both at the exact same moment without your brain picking one or the other to put in clearer focus.
I don't mean to jump into an argument, but this is a subject that's a major debate in the design world because of how many ADHD people there are involved and how many of us work 20 hours days and end up obsessing about becoming more productive as a result. There's regualr discussions on the issue on Behance where I keep my portfolio.

I like your question/s, lba. The fact is that absolute focus can only be done linearly, but my counter is that not all things (most) don't require absolute focus.

Memory, for one, is not absolute focus. Drawing, on the other hand IS a task that requires absolute focus. And many if not most individuals need to pause and evaluate the “required focus” that a particular task requires. But for some, the wiring “instantly” identifies priority and subsequent organization of thought and action.

I know that I am one who can “multitask”, and I have observed many others in the waking and walking moments of real life that have an ease of addressing several tasks “at once” – meaning: dealing with unrelated tasks without a noticeable shift of gears.

I was once called into my supervisor's office and received unexpected praise for being able to answer, in seemingly order of priority, four different questions that were called out by four different individuals ON TOP of each other without pausing for a breath. No - I couldn't say all four things At The Same Time (dur), just as one can't keyboard and chop onions at the same time. But there wasn't any appreciable down beat of addressing the questions either. It wasn't a “let me think about that and get back to you” because I understood and could answer. (I mean, if you don't know, you don't know. but I knew the answers for this one).

Sure, it would be cool if I had super powers, but I've seen many people doing very much the same over the years. But – in all honesty, they've been women. But not all women can do it. I just don't remember a man ever being able to do this.

I absolutely believe that the reason most secretaries (or Executive Administrative Assistants) are women is two-fold: (1) men wouldn't accept the underpay, and (2) multitasking is Mandatory, and most guys can't do it.

I lean toward lba in that the more recent studies I've heard say that when people try and multitask as opposed to working serially things are done less efficiently and take longer.

But I also agree with Ayes in that things require different levels of attention so these much less penalty when switching between them- so you can far more easily keep things on hold or ticking over wile doing something else… while with others you just think you can (Driving and texting is a super relevant example).

Drawing for me doesn't require absolute focus. In fact that is a massive negative to my productivity because my muscle memory and the thought process required to drive the drawing faculty is so well ingrained at this point of my life that very little mental energy is needed for it-
-Which means that unless that surplus thinking power is soaked up some other way I quickly lose focus and can't work.
I need to be talking, watching a long movie, listening to a radio play, thinking about solving some puzzle or problem… It's been that way for quite a few years, but getting worse all the time.

But for writing creatively or doing long involved notes like comic reviews or such I need all my attention.

It worked. I ranted and got some valuable opinions and learned stuff about the topic. Thanks all. I was just using exaggerated hyperbole to have fun and stir the pot.

It is far more effective to be able to set accurate priorities than to multi-task. What's the most important thing, what needs to be done so that one can put it aside to do the next most important bit on the next project thereby doing bits sequentially while working on projects at the same time.

Therefore semi-tacky adhesive backed note paper became the huge seller it is. Lots of little notes and lists reminding one of what to do next in sequence while working on multiple projects.

As for the guillotine on the pick-up we've been using all the spare time to build up a fleet. When the time comes heads will roll and I'll be in charge and we'll do things my way.

I think I managed to hit an all-time low today, because I attempted watching an episode of “Keeping up with the Kardashians”…. My god, my brain cells!

ozoneocean wrote:
Drawing for me doesn't require absolute focus. In fact that is a massive negative to my productivity because my muscle memory and the thought process required to drive the drawing faculty is so well ingrained at this point of my life that very little mental energy is needed for it-
-Which means that unless that surplus thinking power is soaked up some other way I quickly lose focus and can't work.
I need to be talking, watching a long movie, listening to a radio play, thinking about solving some puzzle or problem… It's been that way for quite a few years, but getting worse all the time.

But for writing creatively or doing long involved notes like comic reviews or such I need all my attention.

I'm much the same way although in my case, it's not so much that I lose focus or get bored as that I need something creating a sort of atmosphere which is why I love documentaries and movies to be playing while I work. It kind of halfway creates this illusion that there's other people in the room doing things in a way music alone doesn't. In that way it keeps me from going stircrazy and then losing focus. It also really helps to give me ideas. I'm a hardcore believer that there is not a human being on this planet capable of creating things without some form of input, whether it's coffee or your annoying flatmate smoking a bowl in the bathroom. If the theory of conservation of energy is good enough for chemistry and physics, it's more than good enough for design.

And as for me, I've almost managed to recover all the computer equipment I destroyed the other day. I've managed to get my usb ports, keyboard and mouse functional again. No go on the speakers and wacom tablet though. Whatever they used on the screws to install the speakers on my laptop it is not coming undone. So I'm stuck with shorted internal speakers and having to steal my ancient 6“x4” intuos 3 back from my friend, but it turns out my old broken pair of headphones can play louder than the internals ever could and I can live with a small tablet until I get the larger one to a computer shop that might be able to clean it out and try to get it working again.

heh… had that dream again… where a certain large group of individuals (including a few celebrities) are protesting in front of the offices of Nintendo of America. They're demanding that Nintendo and their players stop exploiting the so called Pokemon so much as they deserve to be treated ethically too.

Time to dust out the computer again. Lots of dust on the filters, which means there's probably some inside the case. Nothing a can of air won't fix. :)

12.5 hours at the hospital today: 6.5 in the ER and then the wait for an OR for a. 75 hour procedure to rid my husband of a kidney stone. He's feeling Much better now and should be home tomorrow. I sure was able to plow through a lot of GAME OF THROWNS

ayesinback wrote:
12.5 hours at the hospital today: 6.5 in the ER and then the wait for an OR for a. 75 hour procedure to rid my husband of a kidney stone. He's feeling Much better now and should be home tomorrow. I sure was able to plow through a lot of GAME OF THROWNS

Good to hear your husband is doing okay. Hopefully they have medication that can prevent those kidney stones from reforming. I hear those things can be nasty…

Reminds me of my youngest brother and his gallstones. They had to remove the entire gall bladder. Funny how out of all my siblings I'm still mostly intact and I'm the eldest. My sister lost her thyroid due to a developing cancer, my youngest brother had his gall bladder taken out, and my next youngest brother (just a year younger than me) had his appendix removed…. I've only lost a few teeth. Can't say the same for my sanity. According to everyone I never had it…

Ouch, ayes! Glad he's feeling better. That's gotta be rough.

How's Game of Thrones, anyway? I've heard good things…

ayesinback wrote:
12.5 hours at the hospital today: 6.5 in the ER and then the wait for an OR for a. 75 hour procedure to rid my husband of a kidney stone. He's feeling Much better now and should be home tomorrow. I sure was able to plow through a lot of GAME OF THROWNS

Good to see he's feeling much better now. Kidney and gall stones are awful experiences. Fortunately I've only had diverticulitis and hernias. I only wish such problems with the digestion on my worst enemies.

The one time I did, it worked.
—
Finally updated to a wireless mouse as there were entirely too many wires behind the desk top. We switched internet providers and went for streamlined and neat to wires, wires, everywhere. We lost service last week and since our phone is piggybacked with the internet we lost the telephone too. It turned out the wire at the ox on the light pole had come unplugged. It was the squirrels, I know it!

Gobsocket.
This is a word you can use when your husband is stuck down suddenly by expensively painful kidney stones, your computer is swamped in litres of bulbing coke, your internet goes dead or you mess up a quote:
GOBSOCKET!!! >_<

OMFG I am so tired!
Work is soooo busy right now… still.
Part of the problem is that we've been winding down for two years or so because it's been so quiet for that long, that we've gotten used to a different rhythm and way of doing things.
But now it's all back to the busy fast, frenetic way it was 2 years ago and everything is getting in the way of everything else.- There's not the time to take special care over projects anymore or take big breaks for influence or inspiration anymore, it's not really possible to bump in other jobs and work on other bigger long term projects and have them done in any reasonable amount of time because the day to day stuff always take priority…
Gobsocket!

Buuut now it's Easter so I can take a break for 4 days.
Thank gods for religious holidays ^_^

i think i may have spent more time in class getting my hair braided then learning about current art history. there was technical difficulties

this reminds me back when i was in first grade and every recess i had to let a bunch of girls in my class play and brush my hair before i was allowed to go running around. all i wanted was to play tag and never get caught

gobsocket, you say. I will make my inquiries into this word.
—

It was ABSURD getting my husband out of the hospital today. He called at 8:15 AM - no one had seen him, and he hadn't had breakfast yet. The Doc had discharged him with a caveat that there was no prob having breakfast (as a result of the general anae-blah-blah). so . . .

I called the nurse's station. “Hello - can I help you?” “I'm sure you can. Please tell me why my husband just called me to let me know that no one has seen him and he hasn't had breakfast yet” – oh - well his nurse, nurse Kelly, would know. she serves breakfast? uh - maybe you should call back a little later. actually, I'll be there a “little later”. oh- that's a good idea. I'm glad you think so.

by the time I got there,he had been fed. Good! let's go - where's the discharge. no one knew. Went and stood at the nurse's station while 7 people ignored me. After 5 mins (seriously - I watched the clock), I announced, Quite Distinctly: “I need nurse Kelly. Should I start checking each room?” “Oh,” one looks up - “I can page her” “Would you? That would be so great.”

Nurse Kelly shows up in about 5. “You know, there are 42 beds and only 8 nurses” (how did I not know that? damn that crystal ball of mine). Yes, she has the discharge papers, but my husband had questions for the Dr. “Well, we'll give him a call.” we did. questions answered, but nurse Kelly is long gone. I go back to the nurse' station. Again, ignored. Overheard 2 managers talk about, yeah, the wing had 14 vacancies, but it was so unfair that they got 4 new patients yesterday when another wing only got 2. Again - I seem to be a piece of furniture. Finally found another person to page the ever elusive nurse Kelly.

She showed up, said she'd disconnect the IV but had to check in on another patient. She'd be right back. 30 mins pass. I return to my new haunt: the nurse's station. “Hey. we've been waiting for 30 mins to be discharged.” Oh? What room? what bed? (cuz we don't have a freakin clue about what your name might be). blah-blah. OK - we'll let nurse Kelly know. Fine. 5 mins later: I'M BACK (insert the biggest big-ass smile you can imagine). “Hi. Can I help you?” “I'm sure you can. We want out of here. Apparently we need nurse Kelly to do this. Will you please find her?” (mind you, same woman I talked to 5 mins earlier). “Oh. she's having her breakfast.” (10:45. yeah - that's beat. I know because I hadn't had breakfast yet either). I said nothing. I just looked at her.

Ma'am, if you'll go back to the room, she'll be right there. “Yeah? That's what I heard 45 mins ago. I'm bored in there. I'd rather stay here.” I kept looking at her. “You can't stay here. This is the nurse's station. Besides, you haven't been waiting 45 mins. you were just here (Oh HO! she did have short term memory). ”Right. you saw me 5, oh, now I think it's 8 mins. ago. BUT I TALKED TO THE NURSE 45 MINS AGO AN–“ ”Please Ma'am! Let's NOT HAVE A SCENE!!!!“

”Hey. I'm just standin here.“ She got up, went and talked to three other women, four heads turned and looked at me. I looked back. One came over. ”Hello, I'm manager so and so. How may I help you“ so, again, I went thru the routine ”We just want to leave“

20 mins later we finally escaped.

I had to go and get his pain killer prescription filled. I like our pharmacy. No probs. But then going out to the parking lot to find my car, I saw a sedan slowly backing up into the rear of an SUV, who was slowly backing up into the rear of the sedan. both going. both backing up. nuts. Nuts. NUTS!! there was thunder in my voice when I yelled: ”HOLD UP!!“

The sedan never stopped, but happpily the SUV did. In fact, the cute white haired guy gave me a little wave and I did my Felix the Cat face at him (right-e-o).
FREAKIN JAYBUS! Tomorrow's full moon is starting early.

It took me a couple of hours before I was cooled down enough and called the hospital to speak with ”patient relations“. You see, the thing is, this is the same hospital where I had my appendectomy just last Nov. My nurses were FANTASTIC! We hugged when I left. I sent the staff a Christmas card. But I was in the acute ward. My husband was assigned to the geriatric floor.
GOD! His roommate was (he told me his life story, He was 62 when he retired from 38 years of teaching in 1988, so he's 86?) in the hospital since Christmas. 3 months! a blood disease. CDC had been called in. a toe amputated. and they didn't have the phone where he could reach it. and he'd call for assistance and my husband noted that it took them over an hour to show up. The poor guy has been narc'd up for three months so he is entirely loopy. Drs came into the room in gangs and talked to him about procedures he didn't understand. Oh My God! It's a horror.

Yeah - I was inconvenienced. But this guy - his family was there yesterday, but he needs a round-the-clock advocate. So I called patient relations and got a recording:
”You have reached the department of risk management and patient relations.“ (fascinating! risk managment is officially associated with patient relations). Our hours ended 15 mins earlier, you ass (OK it didn't say you ass). Please leave a phone number and we'll call you right back. (derp - yup uh-huh. uh-huh)

so tempted to say ”yeah. please call 1-800-you-suck“.

And the garbage collectors didn't take our garbage today.

- - -

on another note: I was assigned (as all my Exec Mngr's managers were) to read: CHANGE BY DESIGN by Tim Brown. Only got through the first two chapters, but it's an interesting perspective when one wants to consider ”productivity".

I understand you pain, Ayes. I had similar problems with nurse/nurse aids during my failed internship. I spent most of my patient time tracking them down to make sure my patients had their medications before therapy. I think it is a good thing that I left that probable life behind.

…

I just started training for my summer job. I am going through leadership training which is the same training that all the managers at the water parks get. It is hosted by the VPs and the GMs.

…o_o Nothing to do here…
orz, HI EVERYONE~!! did you miss meeeeee? *shot*
i always kinda end up like this .__. foreveralone.
<3
Also…THANK YOU ZOMBIE JEEEEZUZ…for this extra day of sleep XD

Katch wrote:
…o_o Nothing to do here…
orz, HI EVERYONE~!! did you miss meeeeee? *shot*
i always kinda end up like this .__. foreveralone.
<3
Also…THANK YOU ZOMBIE JEEEEZUZ…for this extra day of sleep XD

yes. yes i think i can say we did. stop by sooner next time before we start wondering if you've died a tragic death- i was thinking something like drowning in a shark tank. glad to see a lack of sharks about your persons… unless zombie jesus got you… i don't even know where i'm going with this anymore, just welcome back!

I haven't been visiting often enough. I keep being overwhelmed by the number of posts I have to read through to get caught up on this thread.

@ayes: Gosh, that sounds stressful! I'm glad your hubby's fine and you're home again.
Reminds me of one of the more intense times I was in the emergency room. I went into shock or something after one of my allergy attacks and there wasn't a nurse in sight to offer a blanket. But after that and the initial reaction had obviously passed and I wanted to go home, THEN there were nurses everywhere “Oh, but you haven't seen the doctor yet!” I know, but it's 4am and I want to go home where I can sleep and recover properly!

I know the nurses work hard and I shouldn't complain, it was just frustrating because they seemed to have their priorities mixed up.
It's been ages since my last reaction but I still get quite anxious recalling those times…yuck.

—

In happy-type stress news, I got offered a job at the library! It's only part-time, but I couldn't be happier. I somehow lucked out and got a position at the library right by my house. I think it will be much better suited to someone as introverted as me than my last job. There'll still be some contact with the public, but I'll mostly be putting away books and such.

rokulily wrote:
Katch wrote:
…o_o Nothing to do here…
orz, HI EVERYONE~!! did you miss meeeeee? *shot*
i always kinda end up like this .__. foreveralone.
<3
Also…THANK YOU ZOMBIE JEEEEZUZ…for this extra day of sleep XD
yes. yes i think i can say we did. stop by sooner next time before we start wondering if you've died a tragic death- i was thinking something like drowning in a shark tank. glad to see a lack of sharks about your persons… unless zombie jesus got you… i don't even know where i'm going with this anymore, just welcome back!

Haha, thank you XD
I had a epic fight with Godzilla and this entire time i've been healing up so i can come back! ahh HAHHHhhhh…nope, though i kind of had a version of DEATH BY SCHOOL/WORK…still kinda going on really, im just stupidly busy x__x *shakes fist* CURSE YOU LIFE, why can't you just leave me in peace so i can work on my art? ; A ;

Ayes: you are not alone. Similar things happened practically every time a family member was over night in the hospital. My sister is an excecutive VP of the NJ BIA and knows people on the admin boards and the state regulatory bodies so things happen. It's awful when one has to pull strings like that just to get the basic standard of care. With the recent problems with my wife we fortunately didn't have any problems getting people to do their jobs. Admins just hear the words “legal” and “lawyer” and they ask how high they can jump for you and then my wife is the perfect nudge.
—
Just cannot get any pictures done. I take one look at the stage and then walk out again. I should really structure my time better.

Wow, this page has been super interesting guys! Sorry I don't have much to contribute, I've been keeping my head down lately just trying to get some stuff done offline. :] ayes, I'm glad your beau is doing well and that he's out of there!