Things I've Noticed

Quick Quote on Biting The Hand That Feeds You

"Biting the hand that feeds you may provide extra nutrition."

+ Atul

Remembering Names Is Not All It’s Cut Out To Be

When you meet somebody, you should remember the person’s name. That’s what we’re told is proper. If we don’t remember, it supposedly means we don’t care to know the other person. But I feel it is overemphasized in our culture. A name is just an arbitrary label given to a person by their parents or other relatives or friends. Granted, not having names would make life extremely difficult as we would have to use hard-to-memorize numbers or some other system I can’t even fathom right now. But I think people should care less about how much you know their label and more about whether you recognize them and how much you know them as a person.

A dog doesn’t know another dog’s name. A dog might identify another in a doggie park by appearance, but also by smell. They and many other animals rely on their sense of smell. As humans, we rely on our sense of sight. So shouldn’t we prioritize visual recognition more? Acknowledging that we recognize a person should be validation enough that the person created a (semi-)permanent impression in our grey matter. Just yesterday, a guy mis-took me for a fellow med school student that he knew. I didn’t get offended because the guy who he thought I was may look a lot like me. But if the reverse happens and somebody doesn’t recognize me even if they’ve met me multiple times, I would be more offended.

Quick Quote on Boxes

"Boxes are like gold when you're moving out and like garbage after you've moved in."

+ Atul

New Naming, Calendar Date, Airline Itinerary Designations

 

This post (which was inspired by some of my Facebook friends) may seem off-the-wall but every trend or convention has to start somewhere.  I know I’m not going to make any money off of these ideas so I might as well plant them here on the interweb and see if they take off.  Perhaps one day I’ll get famous and be cited in Wikipedia.  These are all original ideas from my brain.  I apologize if somebody else has thought of some of these before me but I really don’t feel like doing research right now.  If anything, then I’m promoting somebody else’s idea for them.

 

Short names for some tech items

-  Computer  =  “Puter”

-  Tablet Computer  =  “Tab”

-  Laptop  =  “Lappie”

Terms for people

-  Nephews and nieces  =  "Nephieces" or "Niecews"

-  A person who has a lot of fat and probably a big frame but is muscular and somewhat fit  =  "fathletic"

-  Chief Everything Officer  =  CXO

-  Rambling on while mumbling = mambling

Condensed Date Format with Day of Week

Format is DDMMYY so you must use two-lettter codes for the month,
JA, FE, MR, AP, MY, JN, JL, AU, SP, OC, NV, DC

Leave a space between each character like
1 7 A P 9 7

Put a “.” in the spot between characters that represents the day of the week. 

The first space is for Sunday, second space is for Monday, etc…

 For example...

    Thursday, January 7, 2013  à  0 7 J A.1 3

    Sunday, September 18, 2005  à  .1 8 S P 0 5

    Saturday, May 11, 1996  à  1 1 M Y 9 6.

Alternatively, you could use a DDMMMYY format with 3 letter month codes,

JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV, DEC

And designate dates like this...

    Thursday, January 7, 2013  à  07JAN 1 3

    Sunday, September 18, 2005  à   21SEP12

    Saturday, May 11, 1996  à  11MAY96 

Airline Travel Itinerary Designation

This is best described with a graphic from a spreadsheet that I use to make it.  It nicely consolidates all the info you would ever want to know for an airline trip.  (Click on the image to open up a larger viewable version or click on this link for an Excel spreadsheet file you can use as a template.)

Hope you get some use (or at least some entertainment) from this post.

+ Atul

Quick Quote on Multitasking

"Multitasking is training for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD.)"

+ Atul