Thank you for doing your job.

The other day the mailman stopped by our office to deliver mail. He noticed a stamped envelope we had put on the chair, ready to be mailed. He picked up the envelope and said, "I'll take this!"

Apparently, this is surprising. We are supposed to walk to the corner of the street and put our mail in the mailbox.

He looked at us for a moment, expecting a huge, grateful "thank you!".

I said, "Thank you?" Like, I'm supposed to thank you for doing your job? He smiled and left, feeling good about himself.

Thank you for doing your job. Should we really be thanking people for doing their job? I say, yes, as a courtesy. To be polite. But such thank-yous are strictly not necessary. People doing their jobs are being paid to do their jobs after all or else they probably wouldn't be doing them.

Another gripe I have with the post office is insurance on lost items. You can pay more to "cover" the cost of a lost item, in case the post office screws up. Here's what the post office is essentially saying:

"Here's the cost for mailing a letter. Now, if you pay more, and we screw up, you'll get your money back." Umm, shouldn't you get your money back, regardless? They didn't do their job.

Let's apply the insurance idea to other industries:

Servers at restaurants. Here's the price of the items on the menu, but if you pay more, and our server delivers the wrong food, you can get the right food delivered to you!

Sports tickets. Here's the cost of the ticket. But if you pay more and the team decides not to show up, we'll give you your money back.

Amazon.com. Here's the cost of a book. But if you pay more and we end up not sending you your book, we'll send you the right book.

Makes no sense.

Jake tries to pick things up.

Jake's in a phase where he tries to pick up large objects and carry them. But since he can't walk, this is difficult. I have to hold him under his arms so that his hands are free to carry large toys. Then his little legs pump quickly as he tries to walk somewhere else with his toy.

I have no idea why he'd want to move a toy from one location to another location five feet away. A lot of times the toy is too heavy and he drops it on his foot or on the floor. He likes this. It makes a big sound and the toy does a couple flips. It amuses him.

He might remember to try and pick it up again, but more often then not he forgets that he was carrying it somewhere and sits down and continues playing with the toy.

In his crib, he will pick up his block and try to drop it over the side onto the floor. He manages to do this about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time he drops the block or loses his grip. When he starts throwing or dropping his toys out of his crib, we know he wants out.

We encourage him to simply ask us.

I remember pay phones.

Those were the days! You'd walk down the sidewalk and see a little phone stand. A payphone! The old-style ones had a slot for your quarter, a phone book in a black case, hanging from a chain, and that's about it.

The new ones had a slot for your quarter and a credit card, and a little screen with text messages in green digital numbers. The screen would say something like, "Enter a quarter to make a phone call."


How quaint. I remember you'd dial a long-distance number and it would wait for a moment, as it calculates. Then the screen would ask for $3.40. As you talked, a voice would come on and tell you to enter more money if you were running low.


I remember lines of pay phones in malls. There would be numerous people chatting on the phones. Occasionally, you'd have to lineup and you'd become annoyed at the person who was taking so much time on the phone.

As soon as you hung up, you looked at your hands in disgust. They had to be so dirty. Not to mention that your mouth was basically sharing the receiver with the last person's bad breath molecules. You wanted badly to use hand-sanitizer, but it wasn't invented yet.

What's wrong with conservatives.

I'm reading Liberty and tyranny : a conservative manifesto by Mark R. Levin. He basically outlines conservatism as the perfect political outlook, and his descriptions of conservatism sound fantastic. If you didn't know better, you'd say, "Yeah I'm a conservative!"

He starts to go wrong when he begins describing liberals (or "stateists"). He exaggerates their position, and talks about all their bad ideas. He says that liberalism is basically a soft form of tyranny because liberals want the power to control your life with laws and regulations.

In other words, they're busy-body do-gooders that want to mother you and protect you like a nanny. Partly true, of course. But he doesn't mention the problems with conservatives. I'd thought I'd share a few in my opinion:

- They're close-minded and stubborn.
- They don't like "change", and are often against progressive or new ideas.
- They're pro-military and aggressive
- They're socially dogmatic and often push religious views on people.

tl:dr stands for "too long; didn't read"

There's a new short form on the internets: tl;dr.

It means "too long;didn't read". I love it! I want to use it at work - after someone writes a really long email message. I just want to reply "tl;dr".

Then when they respond to that with a, "I'm sorry I didn't understand," my next response will be "too long; didn't read".

I think it's great that you're not allowed to be long-winded on the internet. Too long; didn't read. Perfect. We simply don't have the time or desire to read much - UNLESS we're considering spending a lot of money on something. Then we want to read a lot about it before we make our purchase.

A lot of people on message sites like "reddit" post a long answer or discussion and then, at the end, type "tl;dr:" and write a short, one-sentence summary of what they just said. For all the people who don't read long posts.

In the business world this is called "Executive Summary".