Other posts related to white-noise
Shooting for the stars!
Lincoln Adams | August 31, 2009 @ 7:01 pmIt was a dark and stormy night.
Actually no, it was a sunny and illuminous day here, with the weather dipping to the low 70s and the skies dancing with the billowing remnant clouds of Tropical Storm Danny. What a great way to end August and unofficially, the end of summer.
This was my week to leave the office for what we call THE RUN. Basically it involves stopping at a slew of government offices for pickups and dropoffs, and while I’m usually not crazy about this part of my job, I definitely welcomed the opportunity today. If you’re quick about it, The Run usually takes about an hour and 45 minutes to do, so naturally it takes me about 3 hours. It also gave me a chance to enjoy the weather and get away from the office’s resident hens, who cannot help but talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk talk talky talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk…
So I’m driving around far and away from the mindless, white noises of the office, and I’m thinking about things. I had been so desperate to move out on my own that I hadn’t really thought about another possibility: What if I could move out of state for real?
I was ready to give up on the idea that I would ever get another job or move out of state, and in that frame of mind I was looking around for any kind of apartment I could find simply to get away from my parents, resigning myself to the reality that my job now was the only job I’d ever have, and while I was lucky to have it, in another sense it was a blackhole too. There’s no promotional path, no training seminars, no chance to expand my skill set at all. In 9 years, I have learned nothing new. And because of it I was pretty much unemployable as far as the private sector goes.
But the public sector… well now, they actually EXPECT you not to have any skills whatsoever. 
It also occurred to me that I was in the most ideal place you could ask to be in if your objective was to make a life altering, dramatic move and career change. I have no wife and kids, no debt, no property that I owned, not even furniture. I could up and leave a moment’s notice, literally. And while I’ve been building up my nest egg in preparation to move out, I wonder now if I should stick around for the time being and invest in something even bigger, not simply just to move out and find my own place, but move out of my job and my state altogether.
I always thought the Feds would be my ultimate destiny, mostly because since I graduated it had been my dream to work as a special agent for a law enforcement agency, whether it was the FBI or somebody else, a dream I had to give up on partly because of my disability, and partly because I’m, well, pretty much an idiot.
But now there’s no better time than the present to shoot for the stars again, and maybe even if I couldn’t work as a sworn agent, I could still serve in a civilian capacity somewhere. I have the luxury now of being able to apply and go to any job in the country (except New Jersey, cuz, ewwww). I could also take a salary hit without feeling the squeeze now that all my debts have been taken care of as well.
I think I owe it to myself to at least give it a try before accepting the sentence of life imprisonment in New York. Maybe there is a faux log cabin and a bonnie lass waiting for me in Colorado after all. 
Tags: apartment, career, debts, destiny, dream, government, job, law enforcement, life, new york, parents, public sector, weather, white noise
Categories: In The Coal Mine
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Loading ...The Sound of One Man Tweeting
Lincoln Adams | May 7, 2007 @ 6:26 pmA writer at MSNBC recently took a look at the Twitter phenomenon and concluded that Twitter was ultimately boring and stupid. Maybe instead of spending her time clapping her hands and gleefully exclaiming, “Oooooh look at me, look at me! I actually get paid to write the crap I do!” she might see there’s more to it than just announcing to the world when you recently hit the john.
Twitter brings back to life the concept of microblogging, where instead of sifting through long winded blogging entries, we can read a snippet that’s 140 characters or less. For those gifted in the “less is more” approach to blogging, such “tweets” can provide the reader remarkable insight and helpful information without forcing him to sacrifice precious time, a commodity that is becoming even more precious as the inane, white noise of the Internet continues to expand (thanks MySpace!) Check out my latest Twitter friend for an example. Most of her tweets are links to articles she’s been reading, which have proven to be very informative to me and I’m sure a few others as well. The rest are usually witty insights that either makes me snicker or break out laughing.
But besides that, Twitter gives people an opportunity to CARE. It may be vain in some respects, but there’s another part of the equation telling us that when we tweet, people sometimes actually listen. And when they listen, it shows they care. I know with my friends, I’d actually would want to know what they were doing, what they’ve recently been thinking of, how their day’s been going, and so on. If one tweets out a message, “Not feeling well today,” I might be inclined to give them a call and make sure they’re ok. I have an online buddy who recently took an extended road trip halfway across the U.S. She’s not a Tweethead, but had she been one, I would have LOVED to see the kind of tweets she likely would have made during that trip. Her writing has a hilarious and engaging style to it, so there’s no doubt any tweets send to my Twitterbox from her would have been equally as engaging and fun to read. But because I also consider her a friend, anything I read of hers through Twitter would never be considered stupid or boring. And that I think is really the point: Twitter is a tool that can not only enable people to “blog in the moment,” it also helps bring friends and family together. And yes, as with any new technology that comes along, people will always find ways to abuse it or use it to gratify their already bloated egos. Too bad the MSNBC crank who wrote that piece couldn’t get past that to see the value Twitter could truly provide. But then again, this is MSNBC we’re talking about. One can understand why Twitter might seem less than alluring to use should Chris Matthews ever discover it. 
Tags: blog, blogging, caring, commodity, community, friends, microblogging, msnbc, myspace, no doubt, phenomenon, precious time, road trip, snippet, social networking, social networks, tweet, twitter, web 2.0, web tools, white noise
Categories: Blog Fog
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A Weak Signal in a Noisy World
Lincoln Adams | July 30, 2006 @ 8:41 pmSince I now have a broadband connection, it no longer takes me 12 hours to download all of my news feeds using my favorite RSS aggregator, Newzcrawler. Obviously, by the time my downloads finished it was no longer news and worth blogging about. But now that I’ve finally hit the fast lane, I’m face with yet another problem: Too MUCH content. WAAAAYY too much content. I mean, where the @#$% do I begin???!? I checked out some blog directorys to get started, but the listings just go on, and on… and on… and on….
And on.
I guess I could narrow it down by blogging only about those things that interest me the most, such as politics, religion, justice and the law, entertainment, and what’s been happening in the world lately. Unfortunately that covers just about 99% of what everyone else blogs about. Uh, maybe I need to try a different approach here.
What I’d like to do is be able to extract all the relevant signals from the mass of white noise out there, so that my beloved reader is spared the task of doing it himself.. It not only adds value to my site, but it enables me to keep my researching skills sharp and fresh, which is an absolute must if I’m to thrive in the legal profession (assuming that’s where I’m headed).
Which brings me back to my original question: Where the @#$% do I begin???!?
It’s a good thing at least that I still have a smattering of old but active news feeds that I can start out with. Google News also has some monstrous feeds I can peruse of, and so does Yahoo. But I can see this is going to be a personal project that could go on for months before I finally build up a sizeable database of truly invaluable feeds. Ick. I’d much rather be doing other things, like oh say, fighting terrorism, saving the world, and dating smokin’ hot girls. I guess that’ll have to wait till next year.
Tags: aggregator, blogging, blogs, downloads, fast lane, feeds, google, legal profession, newsfeeds, Newzcrawler, religion, rss, signals, smattering, syndication, white noise, yahoo
Categories: Blog Fog
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