Entries Tagged 'Random thoughts' ↓

It’s not often I read newspaper articles all the way through – I’m often too late to a news story to play catch-up trying to understand what has gone on before, or there’s far too many words to get the gist of what’s going on or you have to get dirty newsprinted hands man-handling the paper into a position where you can read it … however this morning the Mister showed me an article about my favourite author Patricia Cornwell. She’s just recently released her latest Kay Scarpetta novel and has spoken in public about her same-sex marriage. I’ve never really thought too deeply about the politics of same-sex marriage other than to be angry that governments or religious groups get to dictate what’s right and wrong in terms of how other people live their lives in terms of the choices they make. I understand the need for rules and laws to stop people beating and killing and stealing but not who they choose to live with. But then you know me, I probably got distracted by something orange and never gave it another thought. And then I read this interview and learned (unless it’s journalism liberties) how ‘rules’ in the States prevent same-sex couples from just getting on with their own lives. It’s also hard to understand the concept of ‘states’ with us being such a small country. Amazing to think that you can do certain things in one part of a country yet not (and be treated differently) in another part. Hmmmm, pretty eye-opening stuff for a Saturday morning!

“If we were outside of Massachusetts and Staci were in a horrible car wreck, a hospital could forbid me from seeing her. The federal government does not honour same-sex marriage, so couples can’t file joint tax returns and, in terms of death benefits, people have to go to extraordinary lengths with lawyers to try to make sure that their partner isn’t evicted from the home.”

From the Telegraph

Hmmm, no flannelette Christmas fabric in Arthur Toye’s … will have to make do with last year’s Santa pjs. Might have to go on a fabric reccy at the weekend.

Was dusting the other night and saw that my peace lily is having another batch of flowers. Without fail, every year, it has 3. Which got me thinking about how long I’ve had the plant. Aaaaages – my sister gave it to me about 18 years ago. Scary stuff … a) that my sister was old enough 18 years ago to give me something so grown up as a pot plant for a grown up place I must’ve been living in (because obviously pot plant = moved out of home) and b) it’s survived many flats, sabbaticals to other people’s houses when I’ve lived overseas, house sitters and a 2 cats!

Spathiphyllum floribundum

Had to represent Xero at another awards ceremony tonight (TUANZ, where we picked up the SaaS award) and afterwards had dinner at Capitol with some friends we picked up at the awards.

Here we are holding the prize, and the Mister with our friend from Ponoko

Sitting listening to the conversation at dinner at one stage I felt like I was in one of those are-you-smarter-than-a-fifth-grader competitions when they pull out the riddle “Listen to the following 4 words and tell me what sport I am talking about. Oval, stump, silly, whites. ” (God! Do I really know that many words related to cricket that are not cricket specific?!) Aaaaanyway, the word riddle I was in the middle of was, what is the topic of conversation in which these words would be found: spaces, dock, coherence, expose, spotlight? I suggested to our dinner party that we all come up with a few ‘normal’ words and attach them to a topic and then have an entire conversation where every other word was one of these chosen ones to see how long it would take other unwitting participants to ask what the hell we were talking about!

And in case you were wondering – no we haven’t been to Capitol in months as the owner we know hasn’t been working and the last menu had nothing on it that I’d eat. I’m pleased to report our guy is back (although wasn’t working tonight) and the two excellent choices on the menu for me are rigatoni with zucchini, basil and feta and pea and artichoke risotto with pancetta – the latter I had and it was pretty good although perhaps a bit much pancetta meant that it was hard to break through the salt to taste either the peas or the artichokes.

I just looked around the bit of the office I sit in. 4 of the 6 people here today are eating their lunch with one hand in front of their computers. Is it this industry? Is it our company? Is it that there’s no time in our lives to stop? Is it because we’re watching our dollars and don’t want to eat out? Is it because we’re becoming very anti-social?

Hmmm, just did a search on Google to see if Superfino had a website for my previous post and the parameters Superfino Ghuznee turned up a couple of pages of results with an orangeblog post on page one!! I’m still *very* unsure about being so out there. I know that’s a ridiculously hypocritical statement given that I have a blog, and I know I’ve said and blogged this before. I still feel like I want to have control over who reads my ramblings. Haven’t quite figured out why yet. It’s not that I’m afraid of identity theft, and in fact as a friend of mine said if you’re out there with a blog and are actually getting known through it, then identity theft is pretty hard. For me it’s something else but I’m still working on what.

Ommigod I’m sorry (you know who you are) – prognostication *is* a real word!

prog.nos.ti.ca.tion
1. the act of prognosticating. 
2. a forecast or prediction.

prog.nos.ti.cate 
1. To predict according to present indications or signs.

I should’ve known better than to doubt the person who used it in a sentence. They are one of the brainiest people I know. And in fact said brainiest person made mention that mine was one of the few blogs he’s had occasion to want to comment on so that’s encouragement enough for me to leave comments turned on!

Long gone are the days of tight blondes in short skirts. Especially on Air NZ. I noticed flying this time and the few times before that that due to our PC and EEO ways we can no longer discriminate when hiring air crew and that anyone has a right to get into a Zambesi uniform and make our journey enjoyable. On our last flight we were served by a woman who could easily have been a small-town grandmother and another guy who looked as though he was an ex-rugby player. Lufthansa was a little different – there was a bit of uniformity going on there with looks and stereotypes.

Talking to someone about this I discovered she used to be an air hostess (in the UK) and not so long ago it seems she had to parade up and down during an interview and was told that if she could fit into the uniform she would be considered for the position. Plus a couple of other horror stories about having to write in to request changing your hair colour even if by only two shades of the current colour! Struth!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve heard further evolution of our language. We all like buzz words in our verticals and often tailor words to be cool and unique so that we and our work seem cool and unique. I’m talking about morphing nouns into verbs. Or is it pure laziness? Or a time-saving mechanism in our constantly full on lives? Using the following nouns correctly in sentences would require speaking more words.

These are the phrases I’ve heard recently (obviously there are heaps more examples), and what I took their meanings to be.

• We should sandbox it – play around with a few ideas and see if we can make something
  
• I’ll lightbox it – take a closer look, see what hidden details I can find
  
• Google it – search for it using Google
  
• Our on-boarding strategy – plan for getting people up to speed
  
• I’ll forum it – post a question to a forum

I was very taken with an ad put out by our company this week. Since the advent of text messaging we’ve become more and more used to comprehending words and passages because of their general shapes and what we *expect* to see.

Based on this I thought this back-to-front question was cool:

And it was vey interesting around the office to see who saw the last word as ‘this’ and who saw it as ‘shit’.

Then turn it upside down altogether and it just gets cleverer: