email – spew

Letter to my Father…

WHERE TO LOOK OFF THE BACK DOCK

See the attached photo for an approximate location where i think the injury occurred.

Its about 15-20 feet straight out from dock, and about 10-15 to the left. That is where it happened, roughly.

Immediately prior, I was treading water in about 7-8 feet of water, the bottom uneven strewn with large boulders descending rapidly into dark green-black as you go towards Ink Bottle. With goggles i spotted a rock that came up to about 5 feet; enough to stand solid with head out of water. As I paddled legs-first, it was the one stoke I thought would land me on the rock; that’s the one that cut me. So even though i expected to touch rock, no rock can make a slice as clean as this thing was. But whatever it was, its leading edge must have been level with or near the top of the rock. It was highly unlikely my foot descended to the muddy bottom where sharps tend to collect.

My hunch is that it must have been either:
(A) glass somehow wedged & protruding, or
(B) a multi-pronged fishing hook stuck fast into/onto the upper side or top of the rock.

A bottle of Yamazaki if you locate and quarantine the damned item…

Thanks…
s e a n

THANKSGIVING 2008 :: a manifesto. a declaration. a venting.

I hereby declare that for Turkey 2008, we kindle a new tradition in a far more intimate setting. You’ll never hear me deny the credo of “More is Merrier” However, when it comes to what i still feel is my favourite holiday around which to gather family, Thanksgiving ought to be a bit more traditional in terms of density.

I need to dive right in and say that it was completely unacceptable that i could barely comprehend the Rounds of Thankfulls at our table what with all the noise and commotion and 20+ minutes between servings. I’m glad the other Kids Table got to blast around and do theirs. I cant say i’m not jealous. But for the record, i didnt even hear one from Jan, so its like my plate was missing my stuffing. Unacceptable at best.

Yes we have small children. But i dont know if i can assign but 10% of this to them. My beef /(or, turkey meat as it were)/ is with the atrocious signal to noise ratio this year. How the actual meal went down is simply one of the rankest cans on the curb. I could also cite that i barely got to speak & commune and be present with the very people i came out there for. The people who define it. The OG Kids Table. Word.

We kids, we have opinions. They – and you know who they are – they have positions. Talking points from which to spout and vocalise under the false pretense of educating those they deem inexperienced, those who still listen only out of lingering respect. But in retrospect, it was simply them talking to state their station in life and their purchase in America.

When engaged on their position /(really, anything other then passively listening and nodding)/, was to invite an acrid form of debate. At times, i felt i had to say /something:/ As a vodka-soaked chalk-line was drawn around their positions such that you’d have to be a corpse to not be offended. And still, against my better judgment, yet with respect and tempered forethought, i spoke-up. If for nothing else then to state that i held a different opinion. Not to engage, but to notify this elder that, at that moment, the kitchen wasn’t exactly homogeneous. This either clicked the Rage button in the particular Bull, or caused them to retreat behind the shield of opinion.

So, whats the difference between an Opinion and a Position? Perhaps one – the Opinion – is a belief you share with others whilst enjoying the broad stroke of /civility/, where debate is both welcome and healthy, where mutual respect is implicit. Increasingly, the other – the Position – is a slow-moving landmass claimed as their own, an ancient pitched battle rendering them apathetic towards and therefore disrespectful of anothers point of view. Its the difference between a conversation beginning with /”I feel that…”/ versus one that ends with /”You know what? Let me tell you something…”/ One usually is accompanied by comments that can clear a room. The other, perhaps, might open a mind.

For the benefit of the doubt, its foolish of me to rail against the lack of logic & reason at an event so steeped in the consumption of so much alcohol. As well, perhaps it’s not necessarily a mutual lack of respect. However, based on the delta between our age groups, the respect simply isnt 1:1 respect. And as we Kids grow older, we’re less willing to simply nod our heads and take it. I’m growing hungry for healthy, debate-rich conversations that dont snowball into tension-filled kitchens and total contact-avoidance all weekend.

So therefore, again, i propose for 2008 that we do Turkey in a more intimate setting. This will be tough to NOT do in Arizona because of where the pending Alexander Girlie Creature will be with regards to Grandma’s heart by this time next year. But it *is* possible. We did it last year in Carp. The balls it took us, and the heat we endured to pull that off is *precisely* how traditions get forged. I’d be willing to entertain keeping it in Arizona if we can do the actual DINNER amongst ourselves, then join up with the revelers. Yet this too presents its own deck of challenges.

This wont be easy. But then again, nothing worth while ever is.

I only wish to start the conversations NOW rather then LATER.

I welcome each of your inputs.

Until then, i remain your loyal Kids Table Historian.

Sean Hamilton Alexander

SPEW :: the email hour

So, while the trajectory of this post may take me perilously close to getting dooced, I would like to open up the comments to the subject of personal email and the workplace: does a worker who has zero access to personal email represent a more efficient worker then the counterpart who has full access and uses it responsibly?

Back when I had full email access, I checked it about a 6 or 7 times a day, spending on average about 7 to 8 minutes or more each time. This represents about a solid hour or more or time spent not working, but fucking off in email. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to this as the Email Hour. (I wont take too deep a cut into my critique of the workplace smokers, who as you may know, also take about a half-dozen 10 minute breaks during the course of their day, which I will not refer to as the Sarcoma Hour.)

Either way, the personal email or the smoker can be seen to ‘take’ up to 10% of their employers time as their own.

On some of the busiest days, I wouldn’t check it at all for fear of losing either my train of thought or having to read a personal email for which a response was required (plausible email deniability). Similarly, even on the most famine of days, I would still only spend my typical email hour reading and responding to personal emails. This is an example of the respect I had for the productivity that was expected of me.

My defense of the privilege of being able to access personal email in the workplace is simply to yield a more satisfied worker, connected to his or her outside life via these innocuous breaks throughout the day. Given my flexible schedule, even on the most compressed of workdays, I feel I still put in 8 hours of work in addition to my email hour.

In return for this persistence of connectivity to my personal life, the company received more focused, more satisfactory work from me as an employee. I know it sounds vague, but I liken it to working without windows to the outside world. A worker who has a window onto the outside world, due to the stimulation received from their view, represents a more efficient worker than the guy stuck in a vanilla cube.

In addition to personal email of a recreational nature, I also relied on the same email access to stay on top of my design business, edgehill productions. I receive on average 3-4 design-related emails a week from my clients, which I am able to answer fairly quickly during the workday as I have access to tools, internet/information and a heightened state of awareness.

With the new restrictions put in place by my company, I must resort to fielding all of these emails – both recreational as well as personal business related – during my time at home, either at night or in the mornings. I must also attempt in the evenings to field any & all of the emails (requests, inquiries, etc) I get on the email forum I monitor.

And here is where the fulcrum upon which my displeasure rests.

On weekdays, I have – at most – 2 hours in the evening and 2 hours in the morning with my son. After he goes to sleep at night marks the onset of the – again, at most – 2 hours in the evening I have to spend with my wife. In order to stay abreast of all the emails I have to read – let alone those to which a response is needed – requires that I take that same workplace hour and apply it to my homelife. Rather then spreading the time out across a few multi-minute segments throughout the course of the day, it all comes in a lump-sum at night.

To be fair, there is a portion of my conscience that clearly states that by definition, personal email ought to be dealt with on personal time. But I must temper that with how I still worked a full day/week, and how strongly I feel about how a more satisfied worker is a more productive worker. I fully understand and respect the reasoning behind the companies decision to implement these security measures. I accepts that the measures were put in place less to regain any perceived loss of productivity but more so to prevent the introduction of costly and destructive email-bourne virus and Trojans.

How much time do YOU spend on personal email during the course of your workday?
Do you have an example of where a worker clearly abused either the Email Hour or the Sarcoma Hour?
Would you accept a 10% reduction in salary to compensate for an Email Hour each day?

Discuss….