Damn the pressures!

I’m so torn on the ever-developing Marion Jones saga.  She used to be one of my favorite athletes (along with Justin Gatlin) and now I just don’t know what to think.  It’s funny, a part of me feels betrayed, like a little kid finding out one of the many white lies we’re told as children, and another part of me feels sympathy for their situation.  As an athlete I recognize the pressure these people are under to perform, to constantly be moving forward and showing results.  It’s sort of like the stock market in those terms, often finicky traders will look less at the quality of a company as a whole and more only at the bottom line, so it’s all about producing results, and producing them now.

But that certainly doesn’t excuse them - many amazing athletes before them have created history (Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis) without doping.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Marion Jones, more importantly it will be interesting to watch the olympics this year as history is again created.

Ever hear of Usain Bolt?  If you haven’t, you will this summer.

Check this out (Dad this is a mandatory click for you)

Say Thank You.

This of course is generally relevant to everything, but I’m referring to work environments in particular.

When in doubt, always say thank you.  Today I had a brief instant where somebody did something for me just in the flow of the workday, and I almost wrote it off to “part of the job” - and then I had a flashback to working for somebody who said “thank you” about once every two years and everything else was “expected”.   I immediately stopped, went back to the person and said thanks - it’s a little thing, but if you’ve ever spent time working for somebody that never said it, it’s one of those work-morale things that goes a looooong way.

Thanks for reading.

Carlin rolling about.

Sitting here at work listening to NPR, and they just referenced the California wild fires using the term “Fire Event”.

Anybody who listened to George Carlin knows that he’s rolling in his grave.  Or he’s laughing.  Or he’s saying “no shit, you thought I was kidding?”.

Know what drives me crazy?

First of all, let it be known that one of my favorite things is “discussing”.  Discussion in general makes me happy.  Also, something I really respect about some people is when they opt-out of a discussion topic because they lack information on the topic, instead of choosing blind ignorance.

So, what drives me crazy?  It drives me crazy when somebody not only doesn’t know anything about the topic they are discussing, but then adimantely defends their point - and then they even try arguments that are COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the topic at hand, but they wouldn’t know that because they know nothing about the topic anyway.

Let me give you an extreme example, for the sake of demonstration.

me: “Having a 4GB install for After Effects is bloated and unecessary”

them: “I disagree, because the Yankees are really good”

me: “Um.. I’m not sure the two are related…”

them: “Well clearly they are, because doesn’t A-Rod choose release candidates for AE?”

me: “You know what, nevermind.”