If you're like me, you've been getting your paycheck sent directly to your bank via direct deposit since you got out of high school. Over time it is easy to just have payday come and go, note that it's time to pay your bills, and have a net gain of $0 once a month.
Now, I'll try to keep personal gripes about my life out of this blog and make this about things that are actually interesting, but this thing has been bugging me since I found out about it on Monday. For some reason payroll had "issues" processing my check this week so I am receiving a hard copy instead. I have mixed feelings about this. Since the bank branch that was literally up the stairs from my work has since converted, this means I have to walk out of my way to deposit this check. This is rather annoying considering I have bills to pay. It's October 31st, I have rent and utilities due tomorrow!
At the same time this presents a unique opportunity. It has been a while since I have had to deposit any check at a physical bank so I have the chance to take some cash out. In the past I had to go to an ATM, but now that I'm at a bank I can withdraw whatever I want. I can get $20 in quarters and then $17 in cash if I so choose. Ah, freedom! Maybe I should take it in pennies. I should also walk through the drive-through so I can use that cool tube system.
Still, very few pluses to offset the minuses. I find this whole thing very in-convenient. Not only do I have to go out of my way, I "get" to look at everything that has been taken out of my checks. I'm sort of a out-of-sight out-of-mind kind of person when it comes to money. It is also the reason I keep little cash on me when possible. What's a $1.25 for a soda when I've got $100 burning in my pocket? I tell ya what it's a lot more when you've got 30 cents to get you to the next check.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway. I think direct deposit is a good thing and hopefully
does not go away any time soon. If it does, I'll have to gold to the
old store and smash piggy-bank system. Although this post may be about
10 year late to be relevant, I feel better and so should you!
Have any other modern conventions you'd be lost without (not including
toilets), leave a comment below and feel grateful for the modern world
in which you live.
If you're like me, the mere idea of space is mind-blowing. The infinite vastness of the cosmos is often more than we can put into words. Lacking words, several companies have made television shows, movies, and video games which take space as their stage. The game that probably encompasses the scale of space best is the MMORPG (World of Warcraft type games) EVE Online.
Wikipedia calls it "...a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates. The star systems can contain moons, planets, stations, wormholes, asteroid belts and complexes."
Dust 514 is a Playstation 3 MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer First Person Shooter). The gaming site, IGN, has an entire page dedicated to the game. You can view videos there that explain an ambitious project that seeks to integrate mercenary combat with the goals of EVE Online's players. Corporations will be able to hire mercenaries to take the fight from space-side to planet-side. This brings together two typically polarized gamer types (MMO and FPS) to create what could potentially one of the most engaging gaming experiences in existence.
I would encourage anyone with a PS3 to check it out. Currently it is in Beta, but websites seem to be giving these out left and right. All I had to do to get my own was search "Dust 514 Beta Code" in Google and limit the search to results from the day and I had mine before I could even get home from work. I haven't had much time to play it but this is the first time I have been excited for a shooter in .... well.... ever. Check out CCP's (company which makes EVE) YouTube Video below and get very, very excited.
If you're like me, your music tastes ebb and flow with the tides of Saturn's moon system. I tend to binge on a band for a few weeks to a couple months and then tone it down and fold them into my regular music interests. My favorite band has been and continues to be Queens of the Stone Age. Since they are recording a new album! I need something to distract me until then.
As much as I enjoy listening to music, I tend to know very little. Music trivia is probably my biggest weakness in "pop culture" terms. I can sing along with all sorts of music, but don't ask me to identify the singer or discuss who the greatest drummer of all time is. Since I am so naive I rely on friends and/or happenstance to discover new music. I randomly discovered Hot Hot Heat off a soundtrack from a video game, and Black Veil Brides was an opener to an Avenged Sevenfold concert.
The song that has been stuck in my head (besides Gangnam Style, damn that song), is "Like a Stone" by Audioslave. Still, one song only lasts for so long. As such, I reach out to you, the masses that are the Internet. If you know of any lesser-known bands that I should listen to this week, leave me something in the comments below. I think I'm overdue for a new music phase and what better time to start than a Monday.
If you're like me, you spend the majority of your days sitting at a desk, staring at a computer. As we all know there have been studies which say that sitting all day increases your risk of dying from 10-200%. Now, I have not read all of the reports, but so far none have them have considered one symptom that is rampant across worldly office spaces: boredom. At some level or another your desk job is just performing repetitive actions. There is not always a project, always a meeting, always a creative outlet for your work ideas. When this happens you sit, sit and type, or sit and click.
While I'm sure you could change your diet or buy a $1500 machine that would combat some of the physical health risks, I am here to help you "survive" the risks that come with that mental void that seems to grow when there is either no or not interesting work to do.
1. Drink water....... a lot
It is a fact of nature that if you ingest things your body needs to either utilize or expel them....or die. Since we are trying to survive however, we are going to take advantage of the digestive system and overflow it with water! I grew up being told that I should drink 8 glasses a day. At least that's what school said, my dad said I should support the company and drink Coke products, but this was back when Google didn't exist so I can't blame him for not realizing the effect that might be currently having on my blood pressure.
Anyway, not here to play the blame game. If you have a water fountain or a water cooler in your office, make liberal use of it. Doing so will make you get up to refill your cup or bottle and then drinking large amounts of water will ensure that you have to get up to rid your body of the water it does not need. I feel like I heard somewhere that drinking too much water can be bad, but as long as you avoid breathing while drinking I am going to say you should be fine.
So we've got a way to cut out some of that straight sit-time, a change of environment is good for the boredom. This movement is especially effective if you only have 1 toilet for a whole office since you will have to dance to pass the time while you wait for the person in front of you to finish. Burn those calories!
2. Listen to music
You can type in time to the music. Perhaps you are working in a spreadsheet entering number after number from a stack of papers. Not very fun, but turn on the Game of Thrones theme, position your input box and you've got a rocking rhythm of 9.............6............269..........0..........97enter! Go on, rock out! It might seem like you aren't typing as fast as you would otherwise, but if you make yourself keep pace it is better than entering one number then taking 15 seconds to move the sheet to another pile and refocus your eyes on the next one. If you want a challenge try doing it to a Metallica guitar solo or something.
3. Learn to dance with your feet
Unlike construction workers, the movement of your fingers on your keyboard does not burn the calories quite like moving heaven and earth shovel by shovel.To compensate for this, we are going to wrap my first two steps (Moving and Music) into a third.
While you are tapping out the tune to your favorite song on the keys, be sure to bring your feet into the action. This relatively low-volume (unless you sit on a metal floor of some kind) exercise is much less conspicuous than getting up in your cubicle and doing jumping jacks. Save face and burn up to 500 calories a day fidgeting at your desk. You might switch to some techno for a post-lunch power fidget to get that digestive system going and bring it down to a nice waltz fidget to wind down from your day before leaving the office.
4. Listen to audiobooks/podcasts/lectures
Words distract me. But sometimes work activities are fairly mundane and can be done with less than 100% brain capacity.This is the sort of task that increases the risk of boredom to over 9000! It is also the sort of task that is most conducive to doing something else while you are doing it. I would not be so brash as to put a movie in the corner of your screen (unless you are in a particularly well situated cubicle), but advances in technology have given us a way to make these tasks more... productive.
Need to catch up on reading? This is a perfect time to get into an audiobook. Whether you buy them (through amazon, audible, or some other service) or check them out from your local library (which is an under utilized resource I may do a separate post on) this is the best way to pad your Goodreads account and wow your friends with how much reading you do. Whether you listen to historical biographies, political ... stuff, or your favorite fantasy/sci-fi novel, this is something I personally take full advantage of.
Another form of ear stimuli is podcasts (are podcasts?). If you have a Zune, like myself, you can look for these on the Zune Marketplace and almost all of them are free! I think iTunes might also have these, but I tend to avoid Apple products. This can be a great way to keep up on current events, learn a foreign language, or just get a laugh. If you're like me and I had to suggest two to get you started I would go with Stuff You Should Know and Hypothetical Help. A lot of radio shows also release their episodes as podcasts such as NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.
When I am forced to use iTunes, my favorite feature is their iTunes U. This service has several classes listed and you can download lectures (both video and audio) and learn that foreign language or take that ancient history class you have always wanted. I am all for the movement to open education and as more Universities get on board with this I think this will be a legitimate way to round our your resume (albeit in a non-official capacity).
5.Catch up on video games
Now this one may not seem too intuitive and there are definitely some caveats to this, but I have recently descended into a lower circle of Nerd-damnation and started watching what are called "Let's Play" videos. For those reading that would actually enjoy this, I am guessing you already know what "Let's Play" videos are, but it's my #5 thing so I have to fill some space.
If you go to YouTube and search for Let's Play, you will get thousands of results. These are essentially videos of people playing video games and commenting on them as they do.
"What fun is that?" you might ask.
My answer: nostalgia. If you are at home or in a place where you can visually watch until your heart's content, this can actually be a good way to experience games that you might not have A. time for. 2. a computer good enough to play. or C. desire to buy without seeing what it is like first. In the office, however, this is not what we are trying to get out of this. For the at-work Let's Player, as I said, we are going for nostalgia.
"How can we experience a video game we can't see? After all 'video' is Latin for 'I see'!"
Well you are full of good questions and know some basic Latin vocabulary!...ok I'll tell you. If you're like me, you have restarted video games over and over again. Whether it is deleting your Madden Franchise when you win the Super Bowl once or forgetting where you are in an RPG story and starting it all over again, you become familiar with games you end up playing through them 10 times. I'm not sure Madden would work for this, but for a game like Final Fantasy VII, I could probably talk you through the first 10 hours of that game without visual aids.
We are going to channel that last claim into an audio walkthrough of a game you know inside and out. When you find yourself a good commentator (I like HCBailly) it's like having inside jokes with someone all day. You totally thought Cid was a little over-excited to have tea served in Rocket Town and "Wow, the main character is named after a weather phenomenon. Let's hope that doesn't become a pattern..."
I am over halfway through the FFVII playthrough and as the game goes on I'm finding myself having to peek a bit more, but the whole experience still brings me back to the innocent days of my youth. So if you have games you know better than you know the presidents just search Let's Play ____ and get some gaming in at work!
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There are probably many more ways to combat the monotony your desk job may entail, and I'd love to hear of more ways to pass the day. If you've got a suggestion please post in the comments below!
If you're like me, you have yourself a blog that you have neglected. Perhaps you started a photography blog but then your camera broke (not me); perhaps you started a personal public journal then realized maybe people shouldn't know that you are having troubles coping with the fact there are no more episodes of Firefly (more like me); or perhaps you simply got high and sort of wandered off (more like Towelie).
Either way, you have felt as though you are neglecting your little corner of the internet and it needs some TLC. Unfortunately it's been a while so this will probably be more like some Rough LC, but hey, this isn't a company... it's not a person or anything, it won't mind.
So here I am, picking up the pieces of this little blog, partially completed posts and all. And I swear by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin that I will commit to writing posts for this blog on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly frequency, or 2 more, whichever comes first. After that all bets are off.
I feel most blogs are just chances for people to rant, a "soapbox" if you will, but speaking stands are not relevant in digital discussions and I personally don't like being yelled at all the time. Occasionally, sure, but I think things that are amusing or cool would be much more worth coming back for. So I leave it to you, my faithful 3 subscribers...what would you like me to write about? I'm open to any and all topics.
Leave a comment below and it might just be the subject of a not-rant.
