Summer fun food and drink - Doing stuff on top of stuff and stuff · 22.07.08 by colin newell
Ever get the feeling that you’ve got a tad too much on the go? My mother reminds me of this, well, almost daily – Like, since when was a man too busy or too multi-tasked by working on his guitar, his studio, his photography, his writing, his work, his radio stuff (deep breath…) to take on one more thing?
There are 24 hours in a day after all. And it is not as if I do all these things at once. Because I don’t. One thing at a time. With lots of coffee breaks in between.
I am, quite seriously, not one of those people that sails down the Trans-Canada highway with one ear on the Sirius satellite radio, one ear on his iPhone (when he is not text-messaging head office) – all the while barking orders to his 3 kids in the back seat of his Humvee while contemplating that recreational property and the hostile takeover of Langford, British Columbia – Now that would be something wouldn’t it!?
Digression complete. One of the advantages that I have is that I am not a member of the Millennial Generation, The Gen-Y’s, The Gen-Xer’s… and… I am stopping there. Let’s just say that I was born prior to 1970 – actually watched the first moon landing…
Double digression.
I work with the Millennial Kids and lots of them (my Employer-A University)… And folks, it is interesting. A more suitable name for my clients would be the Me-menial generation because that is what they are all about: Me. I mean. Them. Themselves. And they really do not get the value of actual labor… of any kind. Paid or unpaid. And it is amazing that at a University of all places that so many of them do so well – when there is so much work involved.
But here are some observations: When Millennial Kids show up for work, they seem to be more ready to play; facebook time, hotmail time, blog time, twitter time…
Yea. Twitter. I kid you not. Twitter. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length…
140 characters. Limiting them to meaningful conversations like…
“Bro, what’s up?”
“Yea, I am just at the University with…”
“my GF and I need to get…”
Scintillating huh?
In my World, I operate on a team of tech dudes – a team whose size has not changed in over a decade – and our work load has increased by a factor of about 5. There was a time where I could start and finish a job. Now I get interruptions on the 3 projects that I am trying to finish and often that interruption will get jumped on by some higher priority in the queue… or an emergency will crop up.
A Millennial Kid would take one look at what I do every hour of my work day and plug in their iPod buds, crouch behind their Asus Mini-PC, turn the lights down… and tweet.
And that my friends… was a couple more than 140 characters… Good night.
Seen in passing - coffee time - as the crow flies | Summer food fun and drink - Who wouldn't enjoy a coffee scrub
