Before You Fall Asleep Reading This...

I once read where music impresario Lyor Cohen works and stays up as late as he can until he literally cannot keep his eyes open, and can only muster enough strength to take himself to bed. Found it. Every week I read "Corner Office" in the New York Times which is an interview with a CEO of some sort. This past week's article was an interview with a woman who works for an apparel company. She says that she sometimes sleeps two hours a night. Granted, she works part time in Germany, and perhaps that's just her German efficiency kicking in, but where I come from, two hours of sleep is called a nap. But hey, she's the CEO of a multinational operation and I'm the CEO of a not-for-profit blog that attracts spam from Asians.

Now that's I've tasted what it's like to have a decent amount of personal time outside of work, I can't help but feel that I'm not utilizing it appropriately. Back in the day (like 4 or 5 weeks ago) I got home in time to eat, shower, maybe read an article or two of something not work related, curse myself a little bit, and then pass out. So what I'm thinking about doing is training myself to start keeping longer hours, and thus sleeping less. I realize that this has disaster written all over it, because my body has been known to rebel if I burn the candle on both ends. For example, I have this trick hamstring, that tells me in a most painful way when I'm not hydrated enough. At first the muscle will kind of spasm, then it will go into "you think this is a joke, son" mode and hurt like the dickens. What I'm saying is that I'm fine tuned. Maybe not fine tuned, but tuned, at least, to a certain extent.

The saying goes that "nothing good happens after 2am", and I'm not saying that I'm going to start staying up until 2am, but I've gotta say, that when I do stay up after 2am it's usually because I'm out having fun. I'm not sure this saying applies to gang members though. Standing on the corner of 61st and Fifth and flashing gang signs to homeless people sleeping on the benches the border the park is a fairly innocuous activity. Move 60 or 70 blocks north and doing the same thing will probably net a different result. So perhaps in some situations nothing good ever happens after 2am. By the way, Vatos Locos for life, homes.

I'm usually in bed by 11 - 11:30, but what would happen if I just stayed up much later. You always hear about these chefs who would stay up late at night in their kitchens perfecting dishes with the help of their pet rat...or was that Ratatouille? Whatever. The point is that genius occurs as the sun comes up but during this time most of us are out cold dreaming about swimming in pools of candy or whatever other ridiculous dreams about unicorns and manifest destiny you folks are having these days. Weirdos.

All these pop/rap collaborations you see now have become so passe. If you told me Raffi just did a collaboration with Gucci Mane I'd barely bat an eye.

Oh hey there Raffi. How about singing that one about apples and bananas?

What was the first real cross-genre collaboration you can recall seeing or hearing...probably Aerosmith and Run DMC's "Walk this Way". If you for one second believe that the idea for that was conceived at an hour earlier than 2am then you are sorely mistaken. For chrissakes, in the movie Young Einstein, when a young Albert Einstein splits the beer atom with a chisel in order to add bubbles to beer, when do you think that happened? After 2am, duh? Scientific facts are irrefutable. It's true. Just ask the Texas Board of Education...wait what?

I suppose the question is this, would you sacrifice sleep and in turn be more grumpy in the morning if you knew that at night you were unlocking your sheer genius, whatever that may be?I hope you say yes, and I hope you stay up tonight and create the most badass origami Eiffel Tower the world has ever seen, or the most delicious carnitas taco the worst has ever tasted, or perhaps the most incoherent rambling blog the world has ever read. Don't take if from me, take it from a certified doctor....Dr. Bunson Honeydew...burner of midnight oil.

What I do Not Recognize, I do not Like

First, let me just say that I can't explain just about any of the comments I've been receiving on this blog. They all look like spam as far as I'm concerned. They make no sense. Here's what they all sound like.

"This is most certainly exciting. Perhaps more color would be an addition. I very much enjoy the spectacle of earth. Buy some Levitra".

What?

Those of you who waited for a pithy Valentine's blog, well, I'm sorry, but I really didn't have it in me this year. You could've checked out my sad sack blog from 2008. Someone at work gave out those little cards that you used to give and get when you were in elementary school. My card had SpongeBob on it and that was the most love I got all weekend. In fact, on Valentine's Day proper I went and destroyed a double cheeseburger with bacon, a side or fries, a side of onion rings, and also a plate of fried pickled tomatoes. And of course a beer to wash it all down. Don't judge me for what I put in my body though. I'll leave the judging for those at work.

I like my new job, particularly the atmosphere. It's bright, quiet, and the people are young and nice. The only bad thing is that just about every morning at 9am the place starts to absolutely stink. Not stink, but reek of something that can only be described as sewage. The first couple days I just assumed it was the ventilation because I sit not too far from the bathroom, but then I noticed a number of people on the floor talking about it. Apparently it's been an ongoing problem. But then I started doing some sleuthing because my olfactory sense is better than yours. People would walk by our side of the floor and say out loud, "jesus, something smells like shit". Not so fast there ugly americans. The sense of smell is a very keen sense and it can stir up many emotions and memories, and after focusing a little bit I closed my eyes and was transported to a dusty, dirty alley in Ho Chi Minh City. Before me sat an old lady, smiling, hunched over a little push cart, folding spring rolls and placing them over the fire. Street meat. My friend and I were too hungry to pass up some fresh spring rolls so we sat on low, plastic, backless chairs, and pulled up to an equally low plastic table. The piping hot spring rolls were brought out with some greens and a side of sauce that smelled like something I wanted no part of...vinegary fish sauce my friends. I turned to the cube behind me to see my Chinese colleague tucking into some something from a tupperware that came from home. That was it.

I feel bad a little that people continually insult her breakfast without knowing, but she eats it all the time so she either has thick skin or fails to realize what she's doing to our side of the floor. I'm almost embarrassed for everyone in this scenario. I never saw an Asian eat cheese the entire 6 weeks I was away this summer so I'm going to assume they don't have an affinity for it. So I guess it would be like working in China, whipping out a grilled cheese sandwich (so tasty) and having everyone say how horrible it smelled. If I cared enough I'd offer some sort of diplomatic solution, but I don't care enough.

In other news, I went skiing this weekend for the first time in about 15 years and for the third time overall. It was a lot of fun, except for those few occasions when I felt I had little to absolutely no control over what was going on. A little scary, and at this age, I think first about how tremendously horrible it would be to blow out an ACL or something. But I survived. In fact I only bit it twice. But those beginner snowboarders...what's the point. They spend half the day on their ass. Strapping, Unstrapping. Strapping. Unstrapping. The falling I can understand, but what a production. I like skiing but I still like a sport where you just show up and you either have it, or you don't. There's not gear, no layers. It's just you. Although unfortunately there's no apres basketball, like there's an apres ski. Could you imagine. If you are trying to maximize your time on your feet learning you might as well ski. If you want to dress like an asshole and suck, apparently snowboarding is your game. I'm just reporting on what I saw. I'm excited to go skiing again. Maybe even...."out west"....which from everything I've heard might as well be Shangri la, ain't that right Lindsay Vonn?

Off to the gym to go for gold. Wish me luck.

The Andon System

This past week I received a lot of positive feedback about the last blog on dating, so thank you for that. I figure maybe I'll touch on that topic a little more often.

In business school we took a class called Operations. I didn't particularly care for it, as to me the scenario of sorting and sifting through a cranberry processing plant never really seemed like it would be particularly applicable to anything I would ever be doing...except for that time I worked at a CRANBERRY PROCESSING PLANT! No. I lie. I didn't. I never worked at a cranberry sorting factory. I remember the final exam for that class being particularly cruel to me. It was probably a fair exam, but just not to me. It was the type of test where you open up see the first question, decide to skip it and come back later, and tackle question two first, and then five minutes later you find that you've flipped through the whole test and are back at question one, staring you in the face saying "now who wishes they'd paid attention to that cranberry sorting factory case study?"

I remember one question had to do with waiting in line at a hamburger stand, and there were three cashiers, a rate to build the burgers, a rate on how long it took to fill the sodas, and something about how many customers could be served in a certain window of time if it was a Leap Year or something. I think my answer was go next door to the taco stand where there's no line. I did learn though. I learned about the Andon system. To make it short and sweet, the Andon system is basically a way to signal an issue at a particular workstation in a manufacturing plant. If an issue occurs, work is stopped, the problem is quickly isolated, and the proper remedies are deployed in order to get the process up and running again. Simple and brilliant. Today, the Andon systems are way more involved, and I'm sure there are all kind of crazy computer programs and microchips and weird looking UPS-guys diagramming the heck out of the Andon system.

Insert your favorite Thomas More horsehair shirt/self-mortification joke here

While the Andon system doesn't seem particularly groundbreaking today, it was considered groundbreaking many years ago. In fact the Andon system was pioneered by a company largely regarded as the toast of the town in the world of manufacturing. You guessed it, Toyota. Well well well. How the tables have turned. How the tables. Have turned. So this unlikely turn of events for Toyota this past week begs the question of how a (now presumed) best-in-class car manufacturer can let something so important, like a issue with brakes, literally and figuratively run themselves off the road. Are you ready for some metaphors?

I really like the idea of the Andon system in the context of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you don't use it (Toyota), what's the point of even having it.

Say you are dating someone. This someone is cool. This someone is popular. This someone is also fuel-efficient. However, you know that there's an issue, and it's not something insignificant. You see that Andon cord (it used to literally be a cord before things became automated) and you're staring at it. This someone starts going all "bitches be crazy" more and more often, and you're just staring at that Andon cord, kind of hoping someone will pull it and stop the craziness to address the problem, but the only person who can possibly pull that cord is you. And you just stare at it because pulling it is not the easy thing to do. This doesn't just apply to dating of course. It applies to jobs too and pretty much just about everything else on this planet. Sometimes you just have to do the difficult thing and pull that Andon cord. Toyota more than anyone else should have known better. I will dismount my soapbox now.

On to more pleasant things though. With one week of the new job under my belt I can say with a high confidence interval that I'm probably going to be able to have more of a social life this next four months than I had the last four months. In fact, I actually made plans for wait for it, wait for it...mid-week. Yup. It's going to happen (hopefully/possibly).

That's about all I got. Go enjoy the Super Bowl folks.