Month: January 2017

One of the many things I’m grateful for in most of my work is that I am rarely on a conference call. It’s also one of those things that while I understand their necessity at times, in hearing most people talk about them, they generally seem to be some of the least productive uses of people’s time, ever.

I recall one conference call I was a part of. It was five other people when I was doing some contracted, iPhone development. The client was very nice, and we set up a conference call to get things started and filter ideas between the other people in the company who needed to be involved. I wasn’t the one leading the call, which was my first mistake, and there wasn’t a set agenda, which was another mistake. The call quickly shifted from some thoughts about the design of the app, to other company business that I didn’t really need to be on the call for, back to some iPhone stuff, back to company stuff, and about an hour later I realized that conference calls are generally a waste of time.

I say this not only with my own experience on, well, that one conference call, but in listening to stories of, and being in an office of various people on, the conference call. Generally there is the “I have a conference call at 2PM,” followed by joining the conference call, followed by waiting for everyone to join the conference call, followed by deciding if the conference call can proceed without one of the people, I’ll call him Mike, who was also supposed to be on the conference call but didn’t seem to call in.

As the conference call continues, the leader of the call will talk about what is supposed to be discussed, and in general everyone on the call will now put their phone on speakerphone and mute so they can go about trying to do other things while listening if something they are involved in finally comes up. Out of the corner of their not paying attention they will hear something they are supposed to chime in on, take said phone off mute, ask “I didn’t catch what you just said. Can you repeat the question?”, the question gets repeated, said person answers their question with another question for a different person, that person chimes in “I didn’t catch what you just said. Can you repeat the question?”, to which that person is now doubly-perplexed because they weren’t paying attention to any of the conversation prior to the question directed at them because they were elbow deep in reviews of material, thickness, and the sweat absorption of warm socks they are thinking of buying on Amazon, liking a dog video on Facebook, helping Mario rescue Princess Toadstool, or simply doodling, as one person near and dear to me is known to do.

An answer is finally given, only now there is a signal “Mike has joined the call.”

“Hi Mike!”, “Hello Mike.”, “Glad you could make it, Mike!”, and Mike’s “Sorry I’m late. Can someone fill me in on what I missed?” The sound of muteness occurs as a synopsis is given to Mike which is somehow actually longer than the call has been so far, Mike asks a question, and a “Can you repeat the question?” reverberates on everyone’s speakerphones.

This cycle repeats until a conversation that should probably have taken ten minutes has now surpassed an hour and a half, but at least socks were purchased, Princess Toadstool is saved, and some awesome doodles were created.

We’re not done, though, as the follow-up conference call is set for one week to give updates no one will have because they weren’t really paying attention to what they were supposed to do on this conference call.

At least there will be more doodles, thankfully not by me.

That’s it for this one! L8R!!

When is the worst time to completely lose your desire to eat healthy and exercise? Yup, right before the holiday season, and for me that’s exactly what happened. Earlier in the year, when faced with food temptations, I was strong. I stuck to my slow carb diet, had my cheat day, and I would even text my wife how strong I was by texting her the food choice in front of me, and using the “I’m strong” emoji ????, and profess my awesomeness for not eating it. Slowly “I’m strong” fell apart, and what I really needed was an emoji to say “I’m weak” that I could text to her as I was stuffing my face with a brownie.

I think my initial loss of desire started with our trip to Costa Rica in early May, but thankfully the summer activity helped my weight overcome some of the bad food choices as cheat day started to turn into cheat weekend. A vacation in the fall didn’t help, and by the time Thanksgiving came I was in full-blown “I’ll eat anything, and if it involves chocolate or beer, even better!” I was weak. So weak. And I wanted to express it. My iPhone didn’t have it. 🙁

I’m Weak

I know some of the face emojis are supposed to signify weakness, or something like that, but usually I look at most of them and they either say “I’m happy ????,” “I’m sad ????,” “I’m mad ????,” “I’m sneaky ????,” or some variation ????. None of them expressed my weakness the way I imagined it, but thankfully my nephew understood what I was thinking, and drew up  the “I’m weak” emoji, complete with cookie. Does anyone have the phone number of the emoji people so I can petition them to adopt it? I mean, hell, they added bacon and a clown face lately, why not the wiggly arm of weakness?

I would like to say that with the new year things are different, that I am back to being ????, but although I may have tried to walk a little bit more than I did in December, January has still had instances of weakness. Take yesterday, for example. There I am, at Starbucks, ordering my venti, iced, nonfat latte, and I spot a brownie in the display. I didn’t text my wife, but if I did it would have been .

Yes, I had the brownie.

I’m weak. At least right now.