Silence in meetings Apr 29, 2021
One of the consequences of pandemic-induced remote work has been the removal of visual body language from group phone calls.  When there are 10-15 people on a call, it's hard for the leader to keep track of individual people, so there's a lot of communications checks like "Is my mic working?", "Does that make sense?", etc.  One of the weirder examples from my experience was when this one coworker would say something like "I'll move onto the next section unless there are any objections" and after hearing nothing for a few seconds, would say "I'll take your silence as consent."  Thankfully we've moved on in recent weeks to the much less rape-y, "I'll take your silence as concurrence." #business
Torque Apr 28, 2021
Torque is probably my favorite physics concept because it's so simple and appears in all kinds of places.  Torque is a measure of force times distance.  You can generate more torque by applying the same force at a greater distance from a rotation point.  It's the reason why wrenches tighten things better than screw drivers.  It's the reason why those little Allen keys are double-sided -- one side is for quickly screwing something in; the other side is for tightening.  It's the reason you do bicep curls by holding a dumbbell in your hand and not on your forearm.  It's the reason why, when my ax gets stuck in a piece of wood, I grip it as far away from the ax head as possible to get it unstuck.  It's the reason why branch-cutting shears have really long handles.  It's the reason why lug nut wrenches are sometimes double-sided (double the torque) or have really long handles. 

When in doubt, use a longer lever. #science
Back to work Apr 2, 2021
I have a sneaking suspicion all these work-from-home promises we've heard over the past year will suddenly vanish once the world opens back up.  At first it was a bunch of technology companies that went fully remote for the foreseeable future.  But even regular corporate-type jobs were on board with supporting remote work.  I've heard lots of ideas about how future work will go:  Maybe fully remote, maybe every other day, maybe alternating weeks.  As a remote-capable worker, it's been refreshing to hear people realize how much work can be done without being in an office.  And despite the drawbacks (of which there are quite a few), I was a fan of teleworking before we were forced to do it. 

But I just have an inkling that once enough people have been vaccinated and the infection rates have gone down, there will be a sort of boiling-over anger from bosses and managers who've been holding back their opinions of the drawbacks of telework, and there will be a rapid push to re-normalize working at work.  And the collective PTSD of the teleworkforce will be like gasoline on a fire.  Once back at the office, working from home will feel like going back to quarantine times, which obviously no one wants.  So I think within the next year or less, we'll be fully back to the way we were, for better or worse. #business
Tiers of music fandom Apr 1, 2021
There are 6 tiers of music fandom: 

1.  Never heard of them.
2.  Never heard of them.  Oh wait, they sing that?  I like that song.
3.  I like 2 or 3 songs by them.
4.  I love that one album.
5.  I like several of their albums, but none of the old/new stuff.
6.  I can recognize every single song from every one of their albums by only hearing the first three notes. #music
Work but not work Apr 1, 2021
It's surprising how much of my "job" isn't really my "job".  Like my job consists mostly of writing code, analyzing data, drawing conclusions, and documenting results.  But other things I do during working hours are things like: 

- Wait for computer to boot
- Wait for mandatory software updates to finish
- Wait while virus scan bogs down 70% of my computing resources
- Spend 45 minutes burning a CD with 30,000 files containing software I need to do my job
- Try to find a way around network firewall to access information needed to do my job
- Take mandatory training
- Walk to other buildings, wait to be let in
- Wait for the network and/or electricity to come back on

There are "job" tasks and there are "meta job" tasks.  Work about work, but not actually work. #business