Friday the 13th

Well Friday the 13th wasn't so bad. I think people enjoyed today's working daze cartoon.

It was a weird but good day. We actually got our first snow in upstate NY. Which is very late for the first snow.

A bit of good news on the Zach front, all my Zach books will be converted to graphic audios by The Cutting Corporation/GraphicAudio®….A Movie in Your Mind™

On the app front, SetBreaker (which Scott will be spiffing up the graphics on) got a nice review here:http://www.iphonefootprint.com/2012/01/ready-for-some-mind-excercise-setbreaker-iphone-puzzle-game-review/

I also learned a good deal about Coal Gasification.

A good day.

Holiday Wishes

Hi all:

Just wanted to wish all of our Working Daze readers a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and a happy all those other holidays.

Hopefully it will be more relaxing than crazy.

I know I myself am planning on doing as much shopping online as possible.

As for the Working Daze crew, I know Dana is done with her shopping but the others are still plugging away.

Ho Ho Ho.

I really like my iPad..

I really like my iPad. I find it to be a great communication device. It's easy to carry. You don't need to even take it out of your bag to go through airport security. The email is great. The web browser is nice. It lets me play angry birds or update my calander or even take notes about a new story or idea no matter where I am. I can watch movies on a plane. I love reading books on the iPad. It's both a kindle and an iBook reader. I can enlarge the text, skip back and forth easily, look up the meaning of words.

But here's my dilemma. Lots of my reading time is during, to put it in World of Warcraft terms, during "bio breaks." I feel a little uncomfortable with taking a $499 "book" into the bathroom with me.

Any thoughts out there?

Computers and why they don't allow us to relax more

Hi all:

I remember way back in college in the ‘70’s, reading how computers were going to give us so much more leisure time. There was talk that everybody would work 30 hour weeks by the early 2000’s. Well it's now 2011, and while computers have brought tons and tons of change, I don't see anybody actually doing less work. In fact, most people I know seem to be more overworked than ever. I'm interested in finding out why people think this is.

I have a few thoughts. One: computers make us all "experts" at everything. Back in the day, we'd rely on typists and secretaries to do typing, graphic people to design our graphics, and accountants to do the bookkeeping and number crunching. Now, thanks to the ease of word processors, graphics packages and spreadsheets, we can all do much of this ourselves. Our work, therefore, becomes much less specific.

Electronic communication is great. We can now talk instantly to associates and clients and find out what they need from us. On the one hand this is great; we know pretty much instantly what our clients and associates need us to do. On the other hand, this instant ability to be able to assign tasks, or to ask questions, means that, often, many tasks are put into our "queues" before we can finish them, or before the next task. It's easy to become overwhelmed.


Also, email, texting, blogging and Facebook give us instant gratification, and we tend to become addicted to this gratification, wanting more and more of it. Therefore, we spend more time seeking that instant gratification. This is time that could be spent working on a longer range project that would also give gratification, but not nearly as quickly.

I'm just spitballing here. As I say, I’m interested in what others think...

Just touching base...

Not much really going on in the Working Daze writer's world this week. One thing that struck me as odd this week has been the "I'm a PC" advertising campaign. You know the one where they build a "pc store" in a persons home to show how a new PC is better than their old PC. The people are then amazed that computers have improved over the last years. To which I simple say "Duh". Sorry but I think that campaign is pretty lame.

For those of you following Working Daze, you probably have noticed Roy is on Weight Watchers. Well in real life I am the one doing the weight watchers. I am trying to get back to my fighting weight of 200. It's a slow decline but it's been mostly tolerable.

I have become Rita..

Wow, I have become one of the characters I created: Rita. Last week I gave our intrepid artist Scott a series of gags to draw. I thought they were quite funny, which they probably were. It was one of Rita's crazy ideas. I liked the idea. Sadly I didn't remember that Rita had already had this idea last year. Yikes. So the gags are being rewritten to reflect Rita's and mine memory lapse.

Dudes and Chicks

Hi:

Do you consider Dude and Chick derogatory words? I think of them as terms of endearment. If somebody called me a "writer dude" I would take it as a compliment. Well I tell my wife she's a cool chick I mean it was a compliment.

Of course I proudly call myself geek so granted I may not be the best judge...