Wordjanitor Strikes Again

Quick, I saw some open space, stick an empty building in it! Welcome to my pet peeve. Obnoxiously rampant in San Jose -- biz occupancy rates are down, so what are we doing? Building more huge empty buildings! YAY! Open space? BOO! Knock down an empty building to build a bigger empty one! YAY! The article by Jennifer Berry that got me all riled up and feeling green? The Greenest Building The environmental cost of commercial construction = huge. And knocking down something just to put a new one up -- even worse. And even if the new construction is "green" -- the total environmental and economic costs are massive. How massive? I've cribbed some nifty tidbits from the article below. “The Pew Center on Global Climate Change estimates that 43% of carbon emissions in the United States are attributable to energy used in residential, commercial and industrial buildings, making the building sector the largest source of greenhouse gases in America. This figure does not even inclu...

This is my sixth year walking for March of Dimes. I walk, speak, and work on behalf of March of Dimes to honor my sons -- the one who has the most amazing laugh in the world and the one who is forever etched in my memory. My sons were born at 26 weeks and weighed less than two pounds each. It was, by far, the most frightening and memorable day of my life. And it was just the beginning of months of heartbreak and fear. @s brother died within an hour of being born. We didn't have time to grieve because we had to be strong and give @ every ounce of our strength and love to help him survive. He was in intensive care for nearly four months, had several surgeries, and spent a year on oxygen after finally coming home. We finally felt confident to celebrate on his second birthday. It took that long just to feel confident that yes, this amazing strong fighter of a kid would get to be a kid. @ is five. This year we celebrated his birthday with a trip to the Academy of Sciences and I decorat...

How many stakeholders does it take to change a lightbulb? Can we put the lightbulb in a microsite with really neat flash stuff? How many site strategists does it take to change a lightbulb? Do we still need this lightbulb on the site? What's the customer benefit of the lightbulb? How are the metrics for the lightbulb? What's the drive-to strategy? How many writers does it take to change a light bulb? What do you mean you're changing the lightbulb? Do you know how long I worked on that lightbulb? How many designers does it take to change a lightbulb? Can we make it a candle? Candles are pretty.

May you never lie, cheat, or steal. But if you shall lie, cheat, or steal: ..... steal a kiss ........................ cheat on death .................................................. & ..................................................... lie with someone you love

I had a money-saving thought: If I could convert my workday stress into electricity, I could power the house and still get a credit back from PG&E. Gas, well that's another story. But with the right diet... Wrong diet? So far, 2009 has been the Year of Working My Tailfeathers Off. Yes, it ends in a preposition and you probably had no prior knowledge that I ever had tailfeathers. Well, no way to prove it now because they're gone baby gone. And if they have any sense, they ain't coming back. The big admission: I have a work ethic problem. It's not enough to get the job done. It's not enough to get the job done well. I have to figure out how to make it better. (Somehow this does not apply to cleaning my house...) Yeah yeah. It's not actually the intensity and long hours, though they're part of the equation. And it's not just in the job I get paid to do. But in the cube-dwelling arena, I have made a habit of seeing beyond the task at hand. I'm defini...

I have my second sleep study tonight. Last week I put on my jammies, gathered up my blanket and pillow, drove across town and they wired me up like a giant lab rat with: electrodes to measure my brain waves and stages of sleep (there are 3 plus REM) movement sensors on my legs, arms, and parts of my face a heart rate monitor belts on my chest and tummy to measure movement when I inhale and exhale a microphone a nasal cannula a second measuring something or other under my nose an oxygen saturation probe on my finger And then they told me to sleep. Oh, and don't forget the camera on the wall with the circle of little red lights that you can see even without your glasses. All night. They monitor and watch, collect a ton of data, wake you up at 6a, rip off all the wires, tell you basically nothing, and send you on your way. I did sleep off and on. I woke up whenever there was noise in the hallway -- usually to hear someone tell the guy in the room across the hall to roll over or to ch...

A recent Facebook update by a friend read: Alex is wondering if anyone can explain in one paragraph how to setup a simple mailto contact form on IIS 6.0 (that doesn' Alt like perl - I normally use FormMail). So, being the snot I have grown to be, I commented back: Kim is wondering if she has ever seen a geekier FB update than this nonsense. Please, next time just put in some unix code and dispense with the formalities of actual words. To which, he replied: Kim, you're right. This is for you: 01001001001000000110001101 10000101101110001001110111 01000010000001100010011001 01011011000110100101100101 01110110011001010010000001 11100101101111011101010010 00000110000101100011011101 00011101010110000101101100 01101100011110010010000001 10110001101111011011110110 10110110010101100100001000 00011101000110100001101001 01110011001000000111010101 11000000101110001000000010 00000100111001101111011101 11001000000111011101101000 01101111001001110111001100 10000001110100011010000110 01010010...

Rumor has it I likely have sleep apnea. I suppose repeatedly ceasing breathing in the middle of the night is not a habit one should cultivate or continue. So off I went to a consult yesterday with a pulmonologist/sleep specialist. Some people are just too serious. You can almost see their thought processes on a LED readerboard above their heads. I am a doctor. I have a form. I am going to ask you questions on the form. I will scrawl the answers in the appropriate spaces. I will not deviate from this path. Then, based on your answers, I will give you a rehearsed speech about the next steps. I will not deviate from the script. Want to make a doctor of this variety really uncomfortable? Use multiple-word answers. WAIT, I have a box for yes or no. I don't want to listen to a sentence, I wan't a monosyllabic response. How serious was this guy? He's asking me if I'm sleepy during the day. I honest-to-goodness involuntarily yawned. In fact, I'd been yawning since I landed ...

My (week)daily lunch travels usually take me to the building 3 cafeteria where I fill a compostable plastic container with whole grains, edamame, cucumber, tomatoes, tofu, sunflower seeds, and a bit of soy dressing. There's some variation depending on the veggie selection, but I pretty much have the same thing every day. Yes, because I actually like it. No, really. Every once in awhile, a coworker will catch me eating something from the animal kingdom and react with some surprise that I consume things that used to moo, bok, swim, or otherwise require chasing to catch for use as food. So my absolute glee (yes GLEE) upon receiving an Armadillo Willy's e-mail titled "The Legend Returns" and announcing the return of the Linda's Drive-In Parisian Burger could be quite a shock to some. E-mail marketing sometimes hits the mark. Even to a jaded web marketing chick. You see, the Parisian Burger isn't just a burger. It's nostalgia. It's the one burger place I e...