Slightly Off Kilter

Up until sometime today, my incoming email was in Rich Text (HTML) mode if that's the way the sender sent it. I send my mail out in plain text, but I was happy to read mail in whatever form the sender preferred. In many cases, Rich Text really is better.

Today, something changed. I started seeing all of my incoming mail in Plain Text mode. Ugh.

We came in largely by accident; the restaurant we initially planned to eat at turned out to close between 3:00 pm and 4:30 pm. We arrived just at 3pm. Pfooie!.

We had passed Coconut Bay Street Cafe on the way to our original destination. When, disappointed and lunchless, we headed back to the car, we noticed that CBSC was open.

So, we went in.

A Long Time Ago, in a World Now Far Far Away...

In 1993 I was introduced to two tools that had a profound effect on the direction my work and interests would take. The first of these was the World Wide Web (WWW). I wasn't certain, at first, how useful it would be. (:-) But within a few months, I was hooked. Still, I didn't realize how important the WWW would be to me in the years ahead.

The second tool was the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I was hooked on that from the first encounter. But again, I had no idea of the scope of knowledge and sheer enjoyment this would bring with time.

The former San Bruno Lyons restaurant is... gone. As of today, it's a vacant lot.

It was something of a landmark. Lyons restaurants dated from the late 50s to mid 60s. Lyons used to be a popular 24-hour coffee-shop restaurant in this part of California. We ate there often before the chain folded back in the '90s.

I recently applied for a writer/editor position with a company that looks like a good match for my interests. As part of their application process, they ask candidates to complete a few writing exercises. That seems like an excellent idea to me. There was just one small gotcha.

Although the company uses a wiki for all of the internal writing, the exercise was to be completed in Google Docs. When I asked why, I was told they assume most people don't start out with a lot of experience using wiki markup. They are "mostly interested in people's ability to express themselves well, and learning a markup-based editing system might be a distraction from that."

That makes sense... for most people. I, however, am unusual. I have 10 years of wiki markup experience, but never used Google Docs before yesterday. For me, Google Docs posed a distraction. It didn't help that I managed to trip a surprise UI issue that offset the insertion point a bit to the left (or was it to the right) of where the cursor appeared to be. Distraction compounded by frustration is a bad combination.

From many of the things I read online, I realize that I really need to say "Thank you" to my parents for the way they raised my sister and me.

Far too many people, growing up, were apparently told, pushed, or nudged in directions they didn't want to go, or directions that were just wrong for them, psychologically. They were told what to study (or what not to study). "You have to be a doctor." "You can't be a writer." "You'll never make money in that field."

I was the girl who wanted to take every possible science class. When that meant I wouldn't have a lunch period in 10th grade, and the Guidance Counselor objected, my Mom said "She wants to take that class. Let her take the class. The class is more important than lunch period."

Thank you.. (I never ate in the HS cafeteria anyway.)

People who know me know of my current obsession interest in Yahoo!'s recent changes to their telework policy. I just can't wrap my mind around a good reason for it.

It's not about productivity (studies show that many people are more productive when they're not in the office). It's not really about collaboration; most people in offices talk a lot but that doesn't lead to great new products. It can't really be about a fraction of a fraction of the employees who both worked from home and also "hid". That's too small a number to care about.

And then, someone I was chatting with in Twitter made a comment that might, actually, explain things:

... [Marissa] needs to do this to weed out folks not totally committed to Yahoo!.

Think about it.

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