Oliver Siodmak's Rants & Raves

No one can accuse Steve Jobs of not having a sense of humor. As he kicked-off the Apple Let’s Rock event in San Francisco, the screen read, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” in reference to Bloomberg Financial Newswire accidentally posting his obituary to the internet. You can read the posting on Gawker’s web site.икони

I am an avid Twitter user and follower. Over the past few months I have found micro-blogging to be a great way to stay connected with friends, colleagues, clients and distant acquaintances.

My biggest challenge with Twitter is learning how to stay focused at the task at hand. If you are on a Mac and you have Twitterific and Growl It is all too easy to become continuously distracted by the continuous feed from all the individuals and services you are following.

One post that really hit me where I live was posted on Sept 4th, 2008 by Emily Chang …

Too close to home .. really!

Don’t know about Twitter? Learn more about Twitter here!.

Between working all week on site at a client and preparing for Jake’s 5th birthday party, I never had a chance to post the chat transcript of a little trick I pulled on a colleague over instant messaging on April 1st! The team I am working with on my current project and I are sitting in one small room. We had just come back from lunch where we had been discussing the “gullibility” of people we know. When we got back to our computers, I decided to put this theory to the test.

The great thing about IM is that you can continue maintaining a straight face much, much longer than you could if you were attempting to pull this off face to face. If I didn’t have to get back to work I could have probably kept this conversation going for another 20 minutes.

I have changed the names to protect the innocent (and the gullible):

Colleague: Hi there
Me: Hi
Me: Did you know that Sandeep has an illegitimate child with a girl he met in Canada?
Colleague: NO, get out!
Me: Yeah. It slipped out at lunch
Colleague: I just read People at the dr. office and it was about teenage pregnancy 700K
Me: Wow .. That’s high
Colleague: what meeting do you have this afternoon
Colleague: trying to keep track of all interviews we have
Me: At first he didn’t really want to talk about it. It appears she trapped him or something like that
Me: Then she found out he wasn’t a US citizen
Colleague: does he keep in contact with the child?
Colleague: was she Indian?
Me: Canadian French
Me: I think he does. He said its hard because of the distance
Colleague: that’s why you gotta keep protected
Me: Plus, she can’t immigrate to the US because he doesn’t have citizenship
Colleague: are they still dating?
Me: Not sure. I think they only have the kid in common.
Me: The girls name is Avril. Means April in french [Can you tell that I went to an Avril Lavigne concert the week before?]
Colleague: how old is she?
Colleague: I’m sure his parents were not to pleased
Me: 12 YO
Colleague: What?
Me: Not sure if he’s told them
Me: He went to school in Canada before he came to the US
Colleague: isn’t he 25
Colleague: that means he had her at 13
Me: No. He’s older
Colleague: 28
Me: I think that’s why he had to come to the US. His parents disowned him. He’s parents are pretty religious
Me: I think they had an arranged marriage for him. But the girls family called it off.
Colleague: wow
Colleague: you are like the Enquirer
Me: Just goes to show .. you never really know somebody
Colleague: does he give $$ to support
Colleague: so the mother was really young when she had Avril
Me: He went to High School in Canada. They meet at school.
Me: I think they both were very young
Me: I’m sure he helps out
Colleague: I’m getting [my daughter] a chastity belt
Me: Good idea

This exchange has really made me reevaluate how much I can really “trust” a conversation I am having with someone over the internet (via email or IM). Especially when I can’t fully gauge the intent of the message they are sending. My point is this. When I speak with someone face to face, I use body language to judge the validity of what they are telling me. Without that sensory input, I become much more vulnerable and have to “trust” that the information they are communicating to me is the truth. Internet communication relies on a much higher level of trust than I realized before this little experiment.

Of course .. now that people know I like to play pranks over the net .. my trust-worthness has just dropped several points!

If you are like Sharon and me. You occasionally find yourself having a really, really long day. So long in fact you find it continuing straight through dinner and into the early evening.

On days like this I try to take little breaks so I don’t feel completely brain dead by the end of the day. Since I work from home, breaks are often instituted upon me by my almost 5 year-old son, Jake. These breaks are often a welcome distraction from the endless series of e-mails, instant messages and phone calls. During one such break today he even volunteered to go to Starbucks and get me a cup of coffee! What a joy.

In addition to the periodic family breaks I also make a point of making dinner a step above eating out of a little paper box. Tonight was a good example. Neither Sharon nor I had a chance to order, let alone make dinner. A quick scan of the refrigerator found the 3/4 remains of a Rib Eye steak (far to expensive to simply feed to the dog — sorry Chestnut), steamed veggies with two jumbo shrimp and a full box of brown rice.

Right about now you are saying to yourself .. “Oh my god, call the NYC Child Welfare Department, they are malnourishing their child!” Not to worry. Jake’s nanny does a great job making all of his meals during the work week. On a good night, there are left-overs for Sharon and I to feed off of. Tonight however, was not one of those nights.

Back to my point. After a quick spin in the microwave, I had all the food nicely warmed up. I simply called upon my childhood memories of Julia Childs and said to myself, “How would Julia present this meal?” Out came to nice china plates, a placemat and a drinking glass. A little thought an effort on food placement and you can hardly tell that we are settling for leftovers.

A few weeks back Tina Fey hosted SNL‘s first episode since the end of the writer’s strike. During her appearance as the special women’s issues commentator, she claimed that Bitch is the new Black! Well, it appears that Tracy Morgan has his own views. Specifically, “Bitch maybe the new Black but Black is the new President!”. Check it out.