mway’s blog

Life is one long, continuous shuffle of frantic events.  For those of us who work for a living (which is a shockingly low number relative to NYC citizens, evidently), myself in particular, this typically involves coding at insane speeds, cursing at IE6, mentoring colleagues, (fail) whale spotting, and occasionally sleeping (when there aren’t zombies to be killed).  In general terms, life is often a clusterfuck of information and deadlines glued together by brief moments of reflection.  Bear in mind that when I say ‘of reflection’, I really mean ‘laden with cynicism’.

For example, I would like to volunteer the fact that about 40% the employee body in my building has an odd breathing disorder that makes them distinguishable from Darth Vader in appearance only.  Another 15% is assumed braindead, as they tend to push every button in the elevator (possibly just to see the pretty lights).  Another 20% (ish) use whispered voices on otherwise silent elevator rides to talk about office scandals, just in case I might have any idea what the fuck a vague reference to ‘the thing that girl in the corner cube does’ actually means.  I could go on.

When it comes down to it, though, strangers are just white noise.  Unless you’re unknowingly friends with them on Twitter, that is – it was a little hard to ignore the guy that gave me the ‘bro arm nudge’, followed seamlessly by the ‘hey bro what up’ head nod.  See?  Here I was, thinking that Twitter was just another useless (albeit entertaining) networking crutch when it came crashing into my death metal bubble on the train.  Real people are on the internet!  I don’t know how much more real you can get than a bro ‘what up’ing another bro.  Er…

This reality, though, is in stark contrast to responses to a recently opened position at Situation.  Craigslist is good for very few things, but among those are providing a venue for extremely sexually disturbed people, finding disgusting, ‘well used’ couches (a frequent description, verbatim), and reminding us that no matter what you do in life, someone happens to be a programmer that wants you to sponsor their citizenship to the US.  It’s unfortunate that an estimated 3/4 (sure, why not) of the web has either refused to accept or been entirely oblivious to the web 2.0 movement and are still e-living circa 2000.  Then again, with all of the terrible web templating agencies out there, who wouldn’t shun it?  I shudder at the thought.

On a totally unrelated note, every entry makes it increasingly clear that I have the least linear train of thought ever.  Oh well.  That said, time for dinner and more work.