Question: What could be more fun than walking into a room and shouting the names of a bunch of strangers?

Answer: A video fight!

Quite a few people on Twitter do this thing called followfriday and I’m not going to bash them for it since it’s the way they like to play Candyland.  Being the daredevil I am, I’m going to try playing a bit different.  Youtube music video fights, it’s more fun than a monkey knife fight.. except there are no knives and monkeys. The rules are simple @ reply someone with a video from youtube and they will do the same while trying to use the song to have a wacky conversation, double points if you can break their brain in the process.

Yes it is one of those Fridays, every one has been wound too tight lately and something snapped, I’ll see all you normal people on Monday…

So in Michigan it is being debated again in the state government about a ban on public smoking, mainly a ban in businesses (ie work place including bars and restaurants.)  I have the stance that any formal public decree on the banning of something is usually a very bad thing or at very least will set a bad precedent.

Now, I hate going to a bar for a night and the next morning I can still taste the smoke in the back of my throat.  It is disgusting and all.  But I don’t think my opinion in this has enough right to stand and overtake the desires of others.   And having the Government coming in and controlling what you can and cannot do is equally improper.  So I ask “Whatever happened to asking nicely?”

What do I mean?  Well, why aren’t you walking up to the owner, manager or other head of your favorite bar or place to frequant and ask them to make the place non-smoking?  Why aren’t you asking them to place notice on the door if they are friendly to smoking or not?  If enough people took their time to ask nicely, I bet many places would go non-smoking without the need of the Government.  If you make your voice heard to the people that can actually make the change, I bet all would be happier in the end.  If it is stated what a business has chose, then I can make the decision if my time there is worth smelling like an ashtray.

Why am I so vocal on this one, because I worry what would be next.  If we can banning smoking, currently a legal substance, what is next?  Will some small very vocal group come along in the name of public safety ban alcohol again?  What about the practice of other non-safe activities say skydiving?  Life is filled with dangerous activities including visiting a bar……killing of the liver anyone?

So I say, get off your bums and ask nicely and see what happens.

These days it seems most people are looking for a shortcut, that product or service they can buy that will make it so they don’t have to work and be the next big celebrity.  The fallout from this sort of pie in the sky dreaming of your big break being just around the corner is that you allow yourself to fall into a trap of inefficiency.  You tell yourself “If I only work a few more hours this week I can pay enough off my credit card so I can buy this new designer product” How is working hard inefficient? Most of the time it’s not, but when your always looking for a shortcut longer hours aren’t always productive hours plus it’s made worse when your not passionate about what you are doing.  Now some jobs are all about hanging around waiting for something to happen but office work is not. Everyone has that person in there office who spends more time telling everyone how much work they have to do and how much of there personal life they have to give up for the good of the company than time actually working. This very same person will also be the one who wishes they could afford this or that object. I’ve even seen this person given the opportunity to shift their work schedule and have more of that personal time they said they so desperately needed, guess what happened? Thats right they fought it because what they saw was not a way to become more efficient but a loss of overtime pay.  As a member of the marketing machine I feel as though we have done a disservice to the workforce of our country. We  produce the dreams that everyone is bombarded with everywhere, we tell them buy this and you too will be one of the beautiful people.  The Media is telling us that there is a shortcut to riches and we can find it if we just spend more.  The big secret though is you don’t have to work endless hours and have huge mountains of debt to have a comfortable life.  The other part of this secret is, yes you do have to work hard, there is no magic piece of software of gadget that’ll do the hard bits for you.  But working hard doe not correlate to working long hours, sure you may have the occasion when you need that 60 hour week but it’s the exception not the rule.  Also it’s not about big paychecks, it’s about how you manage the resources you have access too.  Of course all this stuff is easier when your an entrepreneur and not working for the man.  Managers who think anything other than you chained to your desk 40+ hours a week are rare but when your calling the shots and decided that today is the day your going to work from the local coffee shop who is going to tell you no?

Organizing your workday based on tasks instead of time is a huge part in living a better personal life.  Life at least to me is about celebrating your victories, doubly so on the small ones.  When your workday is task based it’s so easy to say “I got that project done so tonight I’m going to celebrate by grilling a steak and opening that bottle of wine I bought last week for a special occasion”.  When your office is time based, well every evening is “whew! I made it through another day, let’s hope tomorrow doesn’t suck as bad”.  It can make all the difference between how successful you feel which in turn actually helps you be more successful and we all know people like to be on the winning team and when your winning you work better so you’ll keep winning.   The second part of the puzzle is to not run off promising things to your customers that even under optimal conditions would be difficult.  Yes you want to be the hero and deliver what everyone said can’t be done, but you need to honestly accept your limitations.  The surefire way to destroy your productivity is if your spending all your time cleaning up the mess because you could not make a deadline or shipped a shoddy product.  All too often making a promise that wasn’t followed through on is the biggest killer in a company I’ve seen it first hand damage customer confidence which then destroyed employee morale and with it productivity.  When your task based it becomes easier to know what you can do and allows you to set realistic goals and deliver the quality product your customers want.

It’s a hard sell but the accepted practice of working a 40 hour work week is a bad idea.  Even harder is selling the point that letting employees set their own hours gets better results and makes for a happier employee.  When I have to punch the time clock, I lose incentive to work on problems after 5 because of the delineation between “my time” and “company time”  I’ve found that if one can do their work anywhere and are allowed to do so they will complete more tasks than if they are coming into the office everyday.  It’s where things need to go if people want to have happy full lives.

This article is just a stream of consciousness rant thats been bugging me for awhile.. I must have started and restarted it 4-6 different times over the past month and today I decided that I’ll just dump whats been on my brain as it came out.

There is a sickness in the land, I don’t know what it is called and the signs are both elusive and right in your face.  I don’t know how far beyond mid Michigan its dangerous grip extends but I can assure you that here its roots have taken hold deep into our culture.  The disease I’m speaking of is this notion that as an adult one must work tremendous hours for another receiving little in satisfaction and usually also in wages.  Yes the world does need these hard dirty jobs but what I’m talking about is the whole culture of mental abuse found in some workplaces.  While it’s normal to tell an individual they need to be present at their job from 8 to 5 all week, it’s not normal to then make them feel guilty and less of a person because they aren’t coming in earlier and staying later every day.  Somehow people have bought into believing that the you can only measure their worth to a company by how many hours they are seen sitting behind the desk in the office, that if they are not there they obvious are not caring about the company’s well being. Employees are believing this and employers are exploiting it.  Beyond the mental stresses this is causing for our workforce it is even worse for our economy. These same employees who feel they must been seen “giving a shit” about the company are also becoming more resentful and less productive. Having less time outside of their working hours each day they do an ever increasing amount of their  personal business at their desk, sure it starts out with scheduling appointments and making holiday purchases online but it doesn’t stay at that for long. The more you tell your employees “just be thankful you have a job in this economy” and the more “reasons” you give them to give more of their limited time to you the greater they’ll resent where they work.  Sure many of these workers will still love what they do, they’ll just dislike who they are doing it for because just getting an ever decreasing paycheck has never been proper investment in a company.  I’ve seen a lot of companies both large and small act this way I’ve also seen companies who’ve treated their employees well and not only allowed for personal growth but encouraged it, guess which type of companies are hurting or gone?

Why does something shiny seem to bring out the sheep?

You know what I want to know really….what happened to the computer hackers, like the white hat freaks in the garage or at workbenches making stuff doing wacky tasks?  Where are the people that just want to do something for doing sake?

I don’t know if it is an age thing, something with society or what, but it seems as time is moving on, there are less people wanting to break and remake things.  I pick on the iPhone as it is one of the most popular things at the moment that is perfect to explain this.  I understand people wanting technology to just work and I understand that some do not want to hassle with things.  But to mindlessly drone forward about things seems a bit dumb too.  I know there are groups out there that have jailbreak’ed the iPhone, but in the end, that is quasi-legal/illegal.  Why?  Why are we so willing to be told how to use a piece of tech?  Why are we ok with the idea of Apple choosing what apps and functions the iPhone can do?  I understand that is just how Apple is, but why are we taking it so easily?  Why are we sheep simply obeying?

I have never liked this attitude.  I have sucked it up for 10 years now as it is really SOP of mobile phone companies.  If you didn’t know SOP is Standard Operating Procedure and if you didn’t, you have been a very lucky soul never to work in the likes of Best Buy or similar.  This SOP shit has been the main reason that I see my cell phone as just a phone, nothing else.  I cannot allow it to contain data or processes that I may truly depend on one day.  As I may need that data for something the mobile companies do not “allow.”  But now, I am wanting a smart phone of some sort and you know what, that iPhone sure is purdy.  But do I really want to have to play by more and more rules?  Seeing how Apple seems to be pulling apps or denying apps on what feels to be whims.  Why are accepting to be locked into only one carrier to only have one bit of tech?  When coverage sucks for some carriers, I should give up coverage for that bit of Shiny?

It seems that I am down to one choice in the land of phones, some sort of Blackberry, as it seems to be the most open of the lot with decent coverage but that isn’t saying much in the end.  Still, Blackberry is in the traps of only certain hardware on certain carriers.

Dammit it all, people give me a piece of tech that I can move around with and carriers make it worth while to me to be with you for allowing different tech on your system but giving me coverage.  Coverage to me is the key to the worth of a carrier.

Quality of life is still good in Michigan, finding culture in your backyard on the cheap.

When the idea came to write about the quality of life in Michigan I have to admit I was leaning towards believing that things were worse than the already bad it has been for some time.  Thankfully I’m surprised this is not the case. Sure, to the casual observer, my hometown seems to be in decline, which I’d wager would be the report from other small Michigan towns.  The auto industry is in decline and along with it the scores of manufacturing jobs. For those who haven’t been able to adapt to the change, they have been feeling their lifestyle slipping away for the past decade or two. For others though, Michigan has plenty to offer for great quality life experiences, with the added bonus of it being rather economical to take part in because it’s pretty much in our backyards.

This past weekend a decision was made to get away on a day trip. The rules were simple, one tank of gas and just go.  We choose to head south down highway 52 from home and that shortly found us stopping in Chelsea Home of Jiffy Mix and possibly one of the cutest towns in southeast Michigan. With a downtown full of history and art not forgetting the friendly people, we enjoyed a peaceful walk around, checked out the Purple Rose Theater and all the little shops. Unknown at the time, our stop at the New Chelsea Market set the rest of the days adventure.  I’m can’t claim to be any sort of expert on wine, in fact I’m as close to a newbie as they come, but the staff was so pleasant in helping us select a few bottles the whole experience is one we’ll be repeating again.  After saying goodbye to Chelsea we found ourselves over in Saline and ready for lunch.  The Brecon Grille, modeled after an English pub was the perfect choice for a quiet relaxed lunch for two, with the bonus of serving local, naturally raised beef and buffalo from TMZ Farms that made for some tasty burgers.  After lunch we walked on over to Spotted Dog Winery where we enjoyed tasting some delicious wines. While chatting with the owner and purchasing a few bottles to take home, we knew what the rest of the day was to be.  We decided to back track down US-12 to Tecumseh where we visited the Boulevard Market for some artisan cheeses before heading to the Pentamere Winery.  At Pentamere we tasted more wonderful Michigan wines, my personal favorite being their wonderful Harvest Apple.  Also we received further education on wine tasting and the range of wines Michigan has to offer along with a suggestion to visit the Cherry Creek Winery down the road in Brooklyn, which, of course, we did.  By now it was getting late in the afternoon and when we arrived at the old schoolhouse it was nearly closing time. Hoping for the best we went in and asked if it was alright for us to take a quick look around, not expecting to repeat the experiences we’ve been having throughout the day. We couldn’t have been more wrong, they we super friendly and allowed us all the time we wanted to look around and even asked us if we wanted to taste the wines.  After purchasing a few bottles of the most enjoyable wines we thanked the woman at Cherry Creek for her time and wonderful help, said our goodbyes and headed for home.

Without having any ideas or plans laid out before leaving home we managed to stumble upon one of our most enjoyable, relaxing days in a long time.  We learned about a region of Michigan, more about local wines and the great people producing them.  Even if we had set out at the beginning of the day to do a tour we couldn’t have visited each of the eight wineries found in the southeastern part of Michigan in a single day.  Touring wineries is not about how many you visit in one day, according to http://www.michiganwines.com there are over 60 in the state all together. No, touring is about the time you spend at each one in a relaxed atmosphere and the good people you meet.

Outside of the cost for all the wines we purchased, the expense was nothing more than lunch and a tank of gas, but the quality of the experience just as well could have cost so much more.  It’s obvious to me now that not only are there people in Michigan living a quality life but they are thriving and sharing the best this state has to offer.
This is just a small taste of all that Michigan has to offer someone looking to “live the good life” without the advantage of an investment banker’s salary.  Summer is almost here and I’m already planning future stories about other hidden (or not so hidden) gems our state has for those of us looking for something more than the gloom and doom of a bad economy.  Some links of interest if your wanting to explore the places we visited and Michigan’s wine culture on your own..

http://www.purplerosetheatre.org
http://www.newchelseamarket.com
http://spotteddogwinery.com
http://www.boulevardmarket.com
http://www.pentamerewinery.com
http://www.cherrycreekwine.com
http://www.michiganwines.com

So today, I am reading tons about how new larger format electronic reader are coming and how they could save the newspaper industry, etc, etc, etc…..

I am not going  on about that so much for the tech at least.  But here is my take on how a newspaper could become more valuable to me. Read more…

Ok so I have a pretty wacky handle on the interwebs here.  CaptAngryPants.

Why?  It was more given to me really.  I had a coworker once that was fond of saying “Do it up Captian” or similar just referring to people as Captain.  Nothing really odd, I know.  But in this same group of coworkers, it was common to ask me if I had my Angry Pants on that day.  I can be a surly cuss at times. Read more…

So this started a couple days ago within my circle of friends, one of them heard that there was not going to be an upgrade path from XP to Win 7.  Most of them started to say how this was stupid of Microsoft and how it was just going to piss off more people after the Vista issues.

I disagree completely with this logic. Read more…

Gaining readership through profanity: an article about the F-Bomb without actually dropping it.

So one day you decided that you really wanted to be Leonard Alfred Schneider or as the rest of the world knew him Lenny Bruce.  Sure many people have come close but just like the serial numbers on a hundred dollar bill, there can only be one Lenny Bruce.  Others are similar but not the same.  How is it that some can curse, swear and gain popularity while others do it and are labeled losers? It’s simple, the popular people follow rules and when done right they reap the benefits of “Hey look at this guy, did you see what he just said?”

Read more…