Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Some various thoughts on Apple, writing, the TSA, the Talent Economy, and National Novel Writing Month.

sundry: (adjective) assorted: consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds. wordnetweb.princeton.edu

My mind is racing with a number of different things. I couldn’t decide what to write in the regular Thursday blog posting. Then one of those goofy questions hit me:

Why decide?

Okay, maybe I won’t decide. I’ll just write short, short posts about each item and put them all up on one post. So here goes.

Thanksgiving: Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. Yes, a bit of historical research will show that the stories we were told in school as kids were a bunch of bologna. Still, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday followed by the 4th of July.

Apple continues to do everything wrong: Apple finally received permission to sell music from the Beatles on iTunes. How stupid can Apple be? Everyone knows that all the Beatles fans already own all the Beatles music they want. Ooops, two million Beatles songs are sold on iTunes in one week. And to add onto that, sales of computers are rising again. Sales of Apple computers are rising three times faster than Windows-based computers.

The TSA continues to do everything wrong: I find it unfortunate that this heading is not sarcastic. The TSA is actually doing just about everything wrong. The past week has given us examples of patting down nursing mothers and crying three year olds. And then Adam Smith of Mythbusters carries two 12-inch razor blades onto an aircraft (accidentally) after going through a full body scanner. Your tax dollars at waste.

Writing students: I continue to work with students from George Mason University on their writing. They continue to teach me.

Talent Economy: I ran across this phrase this week. Aha! That phrase solve many of the puzzles I have found at work this year. My current employer is struggling with expanding our business (we are not along in this struggle). We need instant expertise in new fields; we need to hire people who have worked on something for ten years and are expert. That is the Talent Economy. Talented, expert people are the most valuable resource.

NaNoWriMo: November is National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you write (I prefer to tell people “draft”) a 50,000-word novel during the 30 days of November. I am trying this. As usual, I love the writing, but hate they gyrations needed to find the time. I need about 90 uninterrupted minutes each day. I can usually find those minutes, but it isn’t easy.