Who Moved My Blackberry?

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by Lucy Kellaway.

While on the plane from Phoenix to Newark the other day, I read Who Moved My Blackberry? by Lucy Kellaway. It was a quick read, primarily because the entire book was written as a series of e-mail messages, most of which were from the main character, Martin Lukes.

It was a great example of the writer’s principle of “show, don’t tell.” By reading Martin’s outgoing messages and a handful of incoming messages he received from others, I got an excellent idea of what Martin was like. He’s full of himself, a chauvinist, not too bright, overweight, a bit lazy, somewhat manipulative, and not very honest to the people around him — or himself. After the first 25 or so pages, was used to the writing style or e-mail as a storytelling device. As amazing as it may seem, the e-mail messages moved a definite story forward, with multiple plot lines. What’s even funnier, however, is that by reading Martin’s answers to e-mail messages he received that weren’t in the book, I knew what other people were thinking about him and got a pretty good idea of what they’d written.

The book is also a look at the corporate culture. Although the book takes place primarily in Martin’s workplace at a multinational corporation, it’s impossible to know what the company does or sells. Martin, a marketing executive, is mostly concerned with corporate branding and public relations. But even though the reader never learns what his company does all over the world, it doesn’t matter. And I think that says a lot for today’s corporations. A lot of the employees are just glorified paper-shufflers that could be working for any company selling any product or service.

The book was very good and I highly recommend it. I left it at my brother’s house for my sister-in-law, who works in Human Resources, to read. I think she’ll be able to identify with what goes on between the lines of all those e-mail messages.

Looking for a fun read? Give Who Moved My Blackberry? a try.

Religion in Inappropriate Places

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Why I canceled a helicopter magazine subscription.

I am not a religious person. In fact, I lean toward atheism. I do, however, have a lot of respect for other people’s religious beliefs.

As long as they don’t try to push them on me.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that a 32-page, tabloid-format helicopter magazine I’d subscribed to included a full-page article by a Christian minister that attempted to relate Jesus to flying helicopters.

Every month.

What is the point of having a sermon — because that’s exactly what it is — appear in a helicopter magazine? Is the publisher trying to push his religious beliefs on the readers of this otherwise non-religious publication? Sure looks that way to me.

And I find that offensive. Not only does it disregard the beliefs of non-Christians like Jews and Muslims, but it also disregards the non-beliefs of atheists and people like me who simply don’t want to read about someone else’s religion. Or support a publication that pushes a religious beliefs where it’s not appropriate.

So I cancelled my subscription.

This is only one example of where religion is beginning to appear in inappropriate places. Can you think of other places? Use the Comments link or form to share your thoughts. Just don’t use them to preach to me.

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

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Oh, so true.

I just got these in an email message. If anyone out there knows the original source of these pearls of wisdom, please pass that information along so I can properly credit him/her.

My favorite: the first one.

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

  1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
  2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
  3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
  4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
  5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
  6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.
  7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.
  8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
  9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
  10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

WebCam Timelapse – July 16, 2007

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It’s getting closer!

My WebCam has been faithfully making timelapse movies every day. I’m trying not to bore you by showing you all of them.

Yesterday’s sky was extremely active. Cloudy then mostly sunny then cloudy with an approaching thunderstorm. This video shows an excellent example of a typical monsoon summer day here in Arizona. The storm was fast approaching and Mike and I really thought we’d get poured on. But when the sun sets, the storm’s main source of energy is removed. It dissipates quickly — usually within an hour of sunset. And although yesterday’s storm got close — probably within 20 miles — it died before it reached us.

Darn!

Here’s the video from the day. I’ve tweaked the settings to shoot a new frame every 8 minutes and create the video at the framrate of 5 frames per second. That stretches out the video to 20 seconds without making a major increase in the file size.

[qt:https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-071607.mov https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-071607-poster.mov 320 256]

Remember, after clicking this image, you may have to wait a few seconds for it to load before it starts playing. Be patient and click only once. It’ll play right in this window. QuickTime is required.

Quick Dill Sauce

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Good on salmon.

Everyone knows what it’s like to be at the right place at the right time. It’s when special things happen.

We were at the right place — Mike’s mom’s apartment — at the right time — when a neighbor came by with vacuum-sealed packages of freshly frozen salmon. The neighbor and her husband had just returned from a trip to Alaska, where her husband had gone salmon fishing. He’d had 50 pounds of salmon shipped home. Evidently, their freezer wasn’t big enough to accommodate it all.

The salmon looked beautiful and was frozen solid. She was gracious enough to give us three packages of it — enough to feed six people. We stopped off at the local supermarket for a cooler bag and stored the fish and some ice in it for the trip back to Arizona.

One piece remained pretty much frozen solid. The other two were defrosted, but very cold. We had one for dinner last night and will probably eat the other tomorrow.

During dinner last night, Mike said it might have been the best salmon he’d ever had in his life. I certainly can’t remember having any salmon that was better.

Fresh Dill WeedTo go with it, I wanted to make some dill sauce. Dill goes really well with fish, especially salmon. A nice sauce would be a change in the way we usually eat salmon — just grilled with salt, pepper, and lemon. I asked Mike to pick up a packet of Knorr dill sauce mix at the local supermarket. As might be expected, they didn’t have any. They didn’t have any fresh dill, either. So Mike came home with a squeeze tube of “dill blend.” I read the ingredients. Dill was one of them. I couldn’t pronounce many of the others. But, in an effort to make the best of a not-perfect situation, I set about finding a dill sauce recipe that I could make with what I had in the house, which did not include cream, sour cream, yogurt, or anything resembling cream.

I tracked down a recipe that used mayonnaise. We had some of that. Although the recipe didn’t sound very enticing, we had plenty of dill blend to spare and I figured it was worth a shot.

Here’s the recipe as I modified it:

  • 3/4 cup mayonnaise. The original recipe called for 1-1/2 cups, which was way too much for my taste. (Keep in mind that when I was a kid, I wouldn’t touch mayo. I was an adult before I started using it (sparingly) on sandwiches.)
  • 3 tablespoons lemon juice. That seemed about right, even with less mayonnaise.
  • 2 tablespoons dill weed. The original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon, which wasn’t nearly enough. I assumed the recipe called for dried dill weed rather than fresh (my preferred type) or “blend.” I just squeezed in a bunch of the green stuff Mike had brought home and added more, after stirring, to get the right color. I wanted to be able to see and taste the dill.

Combine all ingredients, mix well, and refrigerate for an hour. I think the hour is very important if you’re using dry dill weed, as it will provide enough time for the oils in the mayo to hydrate the dill and release its flavors. If you’re using fresh, chop it up before adding it. And, of course, if you’re using tubed “dill blend,” the flavors have already been released in the factory, where some of them may have remained, along with that fresh dill aroma.

The resulting mix reminded me a bit of tartar sauce (which is another thing I only recently started eating). But it tasted very good with the salmon. I’ll make it again with the real deal dill sometime in the future.

Or maybe I’ll just make a proper dill sauce with the right ingredients next time.