Make sure you check the reviews first...

Have we gotten to a point, where there is no return... Are we too "data driven" now? When is the last time you purchased an electronic device? I bet you checked the reviews on CNET or amazon.... When was the last time you wanted to eat somewhere new and you didn't check yelp? It seems like these days we can't make any purchases without the aid of "data". Why is that?

I can't tell you how many times I've talked to friends about movies that look really great and we get hyped up about seeing the film, but when it comes out my friends no longer want to see it because rotten tomatoes gave it a bad review. How does that critic know what your taste in movies is? Why should this super subjective fact alone all of a sudden change months of excitement? One of my favorite silly movies is office space... Its actually got quite an amazing  following and its quoted all over... It only has a 79 rating. Would I have never seen it if it got released today?

This all came up because during debate about how to best get a gauge in employee engagement and satisfaction someone exclaimed "how do we know if our employees are engaged if we don't survey them"? To which my boss replied "let's stop acting like management was invented in the 80s... Businesses have been running way before we could measure everything". And you know what... I think he's right. Think about your coworkers...how easy is it to think of which individuals are unengaged. I've been in a company where nearly everyone was unengaged and literally everyone knew it... We didn't need a survey you could just feel it as you walked around the office. One dude was watching soccer in his cubicle all day. Shit actually right now I'm polishing up this post at work. You can literally just tell by just observing someone at work.

Don't get me wrong I love data. Shoot I'm a data analyst for crying out loud, I live data! But its a bit of a shame that we cant do things without data anymore. Even dating for crying out loud! Isn't your online dating profile kind in a sense "data" about a person? You only pre-select people on some really non important data such as height or what their favorite movie is... 

life is tough... too hard to post every day... so me and my friend decided to split a blog.... actually i kinda hijacked 2 days from her, but whatever... you can find my crazyness @ http://eyaanya.blogspot.com/ on tues/thurs

Rockin the nash

So i got the word that today is the bday of someone i met last year for 3 days and has really effected my life... prob one of the reasons in am still swimming. i met him at the state swim meet and then he died about a week later. 3/19/64 - 4/22/07. I love you buddy... we'll all be thinking about you no doubt next weekend at state.

Workplace invasion...

So we all hear about the blur between work and personal life. Most stories revolve around work demanding more of us... And things like blackberry phones leaving people in touch 24-7. I see this point and it sucks... I personally hope to avoid the blackberry at all cost (we'll see how that works out).
My point for this is that i feel like the invasion is both ways. Technology has not only made it easy for work to consume us, but it has also made ways for us to bring personal into work. So back in the good old days you could leave your post to make a phone call, but it was quite obvious that you were doing some personal stuff. Or you could talk to other workers... Pretty basic stuff... Stuff that is fine at any job.
Now i see people on messenger at work, email, facebook, phone, cell phone, texting, i have even heard of people who work remote going grocery shopping. Now really we are all a bit guilty of stuff like this so can we honestly put all the impetus on the company? (i believe thats the first time i have ever used that word)
Yeah i know its a bit of a chicken egg situation... We need to do more at work cuz they want more of us... Or they need to work more cuz they are not productive enough.
I think work hours and expectations are getting a bit out of hand in all honestly. Assuming you get 8 hours of sleep a night. You are awake for 112 total hours in a 7 day week. Just 40 hours of work takes up 36% of that time. Throw in 1 hour of commute each day... 40% of your time... Add in an hour lunch 45%. If you add in other meals (put in 1.5 hours total per day) we spend 54% of our total awake hours working or stuffing our faces. Leaving us with about 4.5 hours on weekdays and 14.5 hours on weekends... I am not going to add in errands and getting ready for work since that would prob be depressing since it would show we only actually do what we want like 40% of our awake hours which is like 26.6 percent of our total living hours.

Anyway... Isnt that the biggest asian pear in the history of the world?!? I tried to eat it but failed... Tossed like a 5th of it away... Which incidently could have fed a family of 4 in some other country.

Siren

Its a travisty... How did there mythical beautiful seductive women get caught up in this whole mess of evil sounds. They would sing and lure sailors to certain death... Now sirens are a loud signal that is a warning for something.

Basically my beef isnt really with the word confusion, but after like 6 months of living in my apartment i am just sick of it. My apt is facing the road where apparently emergency vehicles drive by... Quite often... Several times a day... Including at night...

To make things worse work by one of the shadiest mc d's in the world, which naturally includes sirens seemingly all the time.

So basically i hear these so called sirens all the m f'in time. And i am here to declare i am sick of it and should i have a mental snafu one day i think it would be safe to say it is directly attributable to this.

Odd pic i know. Its just so cute... We will just say the dog is running away from the sirens cuz he dont like the noise either.

What movies say about us.

I have been looking at a list of the top movies of all time and found something as i was trying to categorize things as chick flicks or man films... There were lots of sequels to man films, but no chick flicks. And also the disparity between man films or more manly films to chick flicks was pretty big.

What does this mean?
For starters it could mean that men just like seeing the same thing over and over. Tho something like bond is pretty different every time, but something like die hard isnt so much.
Could mean that women see a movie and are kind of done with it. Tho my friend suggested it may be because all the movies end with a happy ending.

Maybe men really bond with the characters and thus in again and again to see what their lives end up like. And women see it as a story and at the end of the story they burn all bridges. But this would totally challenge conventional wisdom... And opens questions like if men develop attachments why are women always the ones crying?

Having more man movies suggests that men are always dragging women to go see movies... Tho all you normally hear about is girlfriends taking their dudes to go see some chick flick (could be because i am a man so thats all i hear). Or it could mean that men really cant find anything better to do then watch movies... I guess we could go dancing. Haha.

Anyway it could just mean that lots of people just like action movies and thats it, but thats not nearly as fun to think/write about.

One month to go...

Its that time again... One month before my big swim meet. Just state this time no nationals for me this year. But this year feels different, perhaps because it is different.
Currently i am planning for this to be my last meet indefinately. Which feels weird. I haven been training very hard, but the last few days as i am realizing the impending milestone i have been working my ass off.

This is not the last time i have thought i would stop swimming. Its actually the 4th lol. First at the end of hs. Next at the end of college. Then i thought i would be doing a one year goodbye tour in masters.

But now that i am short on money and considering taking another job and with graduation coming i think this could really be it.

But lately i have been thinking that i still have a few years till my athletic peak... And i am stronger in terms of how much weight i put up then ever... Tho i am in the worst physical shape of my life. But maybe i should just stay the course for a few more years.

Guess we wont know till i start to miss it or not in a few months.

Sign #501 you're an alcoholic

You like your pb j's irish.

And it really does list liquor as an ingredient.

Night at home...

So much for staying home tonight... A-rod gave me a call and that apparently was enough to persuade me. My major learning for tonight... Everyone smokes pot. I however did not... People seem to think since denver made pot legal that its fine, i dunno how they dont understand that fed law trumps state law.
Anyway... I am tired. Hungry... Need some f in french toast.

Sko fo sho?

All presidential runners come up with their dumb little slogans. One that i saw this morn was 'i like mike'. I thought it would be fun to think of a few for the occasion that i run in the future.
Go for Ko
Sko for mo(re)
Ko-nvert for the win
Lets do it in sko8
Lets Ko for the win
Sko's my bro
The head honch-sko.

Terrible i know