Quote of the Day: George Orwell

"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them."

I swear I will write a decent post some time this week.

Quote of the Day: Thomas Browne

“Unthinking Heads, who have not learn'd to be alone, are in a Prison to themselves, if they be not also with others: Whereas on the contrary, they whose thoughts are in a fair, and hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into Company, to be out of the crowd of themselves. He who must needs have Company, must needs have sometimes bad Company. Be able to be alone. Loose not the advantage of Solitude, and the Society of thy self, nor be only content, but delight to be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the Day is not uneasy nor the Night black unto him…”


I am taking another sick day.

In the meantime, please enjoy this watermelon art.
http://www.wimp.com/carveswatermelon/

Quote of the Day: Oscar Wilde

“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”


I don't know why but I am feeling kind of sick so I am calling it a day. Maybe I am just tired from putting a table together this weekend like a real man. Sure, it was a pre-made one from Fred Meyer with only three steps required for assembly, but screws were involved so I think it counts.

Quote of the Day: Samuel Johnson

"Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction."


The week is almost over and I have big plans this weekend that involve doing nothing because I haven't done that in over a month and a half. I'm pretty sure I'll be forced to put on pants sometime but I can't guarantee they won't be of the sweat variety.


This has been a tough week to get through on the professional side of life. There have been some pretty brutal rejections by key prospects. Oh well, I guess that's the nature of the sales game and why so few people play it. This is the first week in a long time I haven't felt overpaid although I am not sure how much of that is due to a tough week and how much is due to knowing I have a mortgage payment eternally hanging over my head. This is also the first week in a month where I was here in the office for all five days so that may have something to do with it as well.


I have huge blisters on my feet. Maybe doubling my daily walking routine to 4 miles a day was a less than intelligent move.


Maybe being the in the middle of a very dated novel by a committed Marxist has made me super-sensitive to such things (I have a compulsion that requires me to finish everything I start reading.) but I suspect my 3 year-old cousin has been reading Karl Marx. Yesterday when he saw our loose change jar sitting on the counter, he asked, "Did you and Stacey stealed the money from the peoples?"

"What peoples?"

"All the peoples of the world."

He later asked me why they paid me to go to work. Trust me, I've asked myself that same questions many times this week.

Quote of the Day: Mignon McLaughlin

"No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why."


I just had the worst sales call of my life. It started out with the prospect saying, "Why the Hell would I do that?" to my request of setting up a later conference call.

Here are a few things he said throughout the rest of the call:

"Who the hell are you?"

"I don't care what my peers are doing. I have better metrics than 90% of my peers." (A complete and total lie.)

"We've solved that problem." (I know this is a lie because this is a problem Obama talks about almost weekly.)

"Your headset is too loud. A communications company that can't even buy decent headsets? Boy, that's reassuring."

"You can send an email but I'll just delete it."

"I want you to know that you provide a very very low quality sales call." (Believe it or not, I am actually fairly successful at my job.)

The worst part was that I couldn't get smart with him like I wanted to because he is a very important contact. I did email the CEO of his company so we'll see what happens.

PS
I kind of need a hug.

Quote of the Day: E. M. Cioran

"Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown."


It is official. The security guards at my building are now completely worthless.

Here is a representative exchange I had once with the creepy little toad-like individual I pass every morning:

"Hey, I forgot my key card. Can you let me up?" (I have to use it at three different places to get in every morning so forgetting it was a dumb move on my part.)

"What floor? What name?" After I told him he said, "Can't find it. Can't let you up."

"Come on, isn't walking by here every day for a year and a half good enough."

"We have rules. We take security very seriously here. Sorry."

"Maybe you're spelling it wrong." It turned out he was.

"Do you want me to let you in upstairs?" he asked as he keyed me up the elevator. Since I wanted to do more than stand in front of a locked door for two hours until everyone else showed up, I told him I did.

On the way up, he said, "So are you some kind of corporate bigwig?"

"Not really."

"I used to be like you. I had it all but I finally had to give it up to get out of the rat race. All that money's not worth it. You make good money, don't you?" (By the way, I have serious doubts about his corporate raider past because he can't be more than twenty years old and he was looking at the floor the whole time to avoid making eye-contact.)

"It pays the bills." Luckily we arrived at my floor before he could grill me any further about my personal finances.

So I've always thought they were strange human beings whom we put up with because they were good at their job. I no longer think that after last week.

The woman at the little store downstairs saw a *well-dressed woman carrying one of the purses for sale out of the store without paying for it. When she caught her at the Tully's across the lobby and found it full of other merchandise she doubted her claim that "she forgot" she was carrying it so she decided to detain her. She yelled for help to the security guard who was talking on the phone ten yards away but who did nothing so she was finally forced to let the thief go when her husband came and wrestled her away with what sounded pretty close to what I would describe as physical force. The security showed up a few minutes later and said he had been too busy earlier but that if it was important she should fill out a report.

*I think she was a klepto who steals for the thrill because her husband seemed very used to dealing with the situation and they could obviously afford to pay for a stupid purse. I wonder if security didn't intervene because they looked like corporate bigwigs.

Quote of the Day: Henry David Thoreau

"The wind has fairly blown me outdoors; the elements were so lively and active, and I so sympathized with them, that I could not sit while the wind went by. And I am reminded that we should especially improve the summer to live out-of-doors. When we may so easily, it behooves us to break up this custom of sitting in the house, for it is but a custom, and I am not sure that it has the sanction of common sense. A man no sooner gets up than he sits down again. Fowls leave their perch in the morning, and beasts their lairs, unless they are such as go abroad only by night. The cockerel does not take up a new perch in the barn, and he is the embodiment of health and common sense. Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer?"


I have my doubts that summer is finally here but it is nice to pretend once in a while.