The CaffiNation Podcast

If you recently read my article on the Micro Blogging Social Networks, or SocNets, and you should have by now. You may know that twitter has a mascot, but not the good kind of mascot this mascot only comes out of the dungeon to inflict pain on people. Known by his filename as whale.png, the Fail Whale is the smirking an apparently euphoric error screen which graces twitter when the servers are up, the wheels are spinning, but the hamsters are dead. The used to have a screen with a one handed robot, but apparently that was to blatant, and obvious of an error message. They wanted us to know that tiny birds can lift a whale, and he loves it.

No one ever asks why the Whale is happy? Do they only let him out when the servers die? Are the birds attempting to free willy? What do the birds get out of all of this? No one knows. But the Failwhale has two cousins which we can only hope we never see…

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I had a teacher in Middle school Mrs Harper, who tasked me with finding a quiet way to work out my nervous energy when working on a project. “Find or make a ‘fidget‘ ” she said. It has to be small, light, and silent. Now I just use whatever debris is handy. I have her to thank for the best productivity tip I ever received. Do you have a fidget?

I need to have busy hands. When I’m working on a problem or waiting to get something done I make things, i doodle, i draw constantly, not well mind you. The larger the product the more raw materials from the office landscape i seem to use. If I ever work on a huge project i might disassemble something important. For especially big projects keeping my hands busy is just enough of a distraction to clear my head and allow my mind to move forward. Think Lucky Bat from a Few Good Men.

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