Work Day, A Reflection

*Disclaimer 

In no uncertain terms does this post reflect the conditions of my current employer or the duties of my job. I love my job and am fortunate to have one after graduating college. I take my job very seriously and am good at it. The goal of this post is to illustrate to you, dear reader, the mundaneness of working a full time, 9-5 job, which can be felt at any other company. Think the movie Office Space. 


Lately, weekdays feel like a voluntary prison sentence. Work hours are not the only time I feel like an inmate, my free time on weekdays equally feel like that of a prisoner. The mundane is overtaking me.

Wake up-- read the NYT-- coffee-- shower-- make lunch-- warm up car--- buy breakfast-- bull shit with co-workers-- answer emails-- make calls-- go on scheduled calls--- meetings--- lunch--- more emails-- more calls-- zone out-- bull shit-- zone out-- scheduled call-- leave-- gym-- dinner-- read-- Netflix-- bed. Rinse, wash, then repeat for five days in-a-row.

Work meticulously completed for the month is erased like a differential equation on a white board only to start over, clean, the following month. Success is short-lived, especially if the paycheck is spent.

As an employee at the bottom of the org chart, my daily tasks' variance is insignificant. The people I call and email change, but the procedure does not. Monthly revenue quota is met most months.

As if the mundaneness hadn’t been oppressive enough when I found myself being passed up for a promotion recently, it became all the more apparent that my performance was not the question-- seem to be my Doogie Howser level age? My contribution to the company is generating revenue and managing customers. Sometimes I pass intelligence to marketing, customer success, and development. The latter is not my responsibility, yet I do it anyway because I want the company to be successful. Would take on tasks outside my responsibility not warrant my ability to take on more responsibility? No. I can handle it. Alas, besides making larger deals, my company does not need me to do anything else. Just a that-a-boy and keep earning while I make a modest portion.

While 50-60 hours of my week are spent at work, another 50 hours are spent sleeping, and 58-63 hours are spent doing everything else I need to do. The amount of time allocated to off work and sleep hours is disenchanting because of my concern for working well and getting enough sleep. Lately, I feel more ambitious while not at work, so I have created more projects to complete outside of work than at work, which should be the reverse. As a result, the amount of time required for proper completion of post-work projects is not adequate. I feel more inspired at home with my own thoughts than I do at work for following someone else’s dream is demotivating. If only my ambitions felt during free time coincided with what I do at work. Maybe this is the reason why I am experiencing this thought.

Whereas, some weeks days are high and mighty! This doesn't happen often, and when it does, I feel unstoppable. Some of the invincibility comes from sequential slice wins like crushing my revenue quota, seeing an old college friend at a reunion party, going on a company outing, thinking of an innovative strategy for enterprise sales during said company retreat, being invited to sit in on a demo of a product thought of as useless only to solve a need for data one year running, seeing my lady-friend Saturday night after not anticipating the event to happen at all, and smelling the hint of a promotion all in the course of four days. When I do have an endorphin binge, it doesn't stop for many days. Unfortunately, what must go up must come down, and the mood is no exception. Yet, I welcome the change in mood for knowing downs from ups is what makes the ups so pleasurable. A good mood high is sustained from short term and long term accomplishments in all aspects of life, a consistently held positive attitude, and luck.

When I feel blue or bright, I reflect on where I've been and ponder where I am going to find solace and serenity. Life is a canvas covered in pencil drawings. The beauty of life is it can be whatever you want. All it takes is an eraser. But, remember that even the best eraser leaves marks from the past. Nevertheless, the canvas will never look the same as it did a year ago. Though it may seem like it hasn't changed because the job, domicile, and body remains the same, I honestly believe to have changed as a person and, onward, my path to a successful career is in an entirely new and exciting direction from where I thought it was going a year ago.



-Tyler

The most searched keyword online is not what you think

Talking about work ought to be reserved for regular business hours, only. If you find yourself in a situation when it does come up and are unfamiliar with what the other person does for a living or what that person does isn't titillating then shop-talk can be a drag. I have a few canned questions and responses poised for deployment. One of my questions is whimsical:

What is the most searched keyword on Google?

People have responded with sports or models, but mostly pornography. Nevertheless, based on data my employer gathers on Google's search engine (I hope they do not find me writing about this), Facebook is the most searched keyword on Google, on a desktop computer, in the United States.

So, like, why?

Facebook is the most popular social media website in the world. If you are reading this blog post, you probably landed here from my status update. Over 229 million people are registered on Facebook, according to statista.com. More than half the US population is registered on Facebook. According to Experian, Facebook's market share of social media is greater than all other social medias, combine. The enormity of Facebook's user base is impressive. More people visit Facebook via Google than Weather.com. However, the way users get to Facebook is seldom excitement.

The address bar is like the drawbridge that takes you from the city that is your web browser to the world wide web. Every web browser has an address bar, which can display public information (world wide web), private information (intranet), and locally stored files through protocols. A separate engine is required for each type of protocol. Request for information is made through a uniform resource locator, otherwise known as a URL. Though a URL is indicative of a request for information on the internet, the term is used interchangeably with URIs (uniform resource identifiers). Examples of URI and URL protocols are as follow, mailto, HTTP, or file. A URL string is made up of a type of information request (HTTP), a host name (www.example.com [where the information is stored]), and a file name (robots.txt). http://www.example.com/robots.txt. The backslashes separate the string.

Yet, the address bar looks pure and harmless, like an ephemeral college fling.  Its true power is unknown to most users. When an incomplete URL is entered into the address bar, a search is made via the browser's default engine, respectively. The most common search engine a browser defaults to is Google.

According to Wikipedia's project servers, in 2012 [Google] Chrome, Internet Explorer (IE), FireFox (formerly, Netscape), and (Apple) Safari are the most used web browsers in the United States. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all use Google as their default search engine. When accessing this blog, the most used browsers are the following:

Thus, when users want to lackadaisically access the most popular social media website on a browser with the most widely used search engine on the internet by haphazardly typing an incomplete URL the user inadvertently executes a search, which is why Facebook is the most searched keyword on Google, on a desktop, in the United States.

Though access to the most modern web browsers is free, millions of dollars are spent to ensure their UI is crisp, problem free, and scrupulous. The web browser is made up of many facets unknown to its users at large. One could conspire that its architects want the interworking to remain a secret. The fact of the matter is they do not. A simple user interface (UI) is crucial to any software's success. A complicated UI is simply to create, and its inverse is true, as well. The less its user knows and sees about the software in its UI, the better of an experience they will have. Web browsers want diurnal users, which is why Google strenuously lobbies browsers to be its default search engine (80% of Google's revenues come from paid search result advertisements).

So, what is the second most search keyword on Google, you ask? Well, dear reader, it is Google. Chew on that.





-Tyler

The Purpose of Media and Music

Have you ever watched a television show, movie, or stage production without music? Imagine not hearing clarion trumpets sing during the famous cart chase scene in Indiana Jones? What if West World did not have a player piano playing amid the background? Or, would you be confused if The Lord of the Rings theme did not play every time something epic happened throughout the trilogy?

Would you keep watching?

In media*, music queues its viewers to feel a particular emotion. Whether the music is singing, an orchestra, a piano, or a track from the Billboard top 100 and whether the feeling is jaunty, ambiguity or egregiousness media and music seamlessly connects its viewers with convoluted emotions, harmoniously. Music and media are not mutually exclusive. Emotion is provoked by music. Place the right music at the right time, and the audience will feel the actor's soul.

Remember that scene from the movie Jaws when that boy swims out into the ocean with a boogie board? The scene was calm until your pulse jolts as the sound DUNUHDUNUHDUN indicated impending doom. That music is the scene's intensity, not the attack by Jaws. Now imagine not being cued by the sounds of a high pitch tuba as doom neared - it would just be a flock of kids and worried parents screaming and water sloshing around.

But, media does not require music to make an effect on its viewers. The effect of music is nuanced by the listener's attitude. For some, music is not heard-- one could passively hear music while intently focused on the visual aesthetics or the body language conversation. The puppet show in Allegory of the Cave demonstrates that a program can be impactful in the absence of accompanying music. The lack of sound leaves the viewers to make up their own mind about what the prisoners thought of Plato's lesson.

Anyway, silent movies are not completely silent. A live piano plays while the film screens. The piano player will either have sheet music provided by the filmmaker or will improvisate. Live music was recognized as critical to the ambiance and audience emotional cues. When the viewer wants to be entertained their brain waves sit at rest while expecting the entertainer to dictate what they ought to feel. Pianos were the sitcom laugh track of silent movies.

The necessity and effect of a program's music are contingents of the audience's expectation, attitude and the medium of which the media is performed.



-Tyler


*Media is referred to like movies, televisions, stage performances, camp fires, anything that would constitute entertainment for an audience.