Quitting caffeine
I quit caffeine as of a few weeks ago.  I had been drinking up to 8 cups of coffee per day (only 2 scoops of grounds though) for the past few years, and I had developed a slight sweating problem.  I'm not completely sure the two things were related, but I had been thinking about giving up caffeine anyway.  I don't like the idea of being dependent on something.  What if I'm somewhere where I can't get a fix?  And really that's what caffeine has become for me.  It's long since stopped being a morning pick-me-up or anything like that.  It's a substance, that if I don't ingest on a daily basis, I'll get a miserable headache and feel like garbage. 

I'm really not sure what to believe about the health benefits of caffeine.  I've heard it can be good.  I've heard it can be bad.  My thought is that our ancestors existed just fine without it.  Plus it's certainly not an essential vitamin or mineral or anything like that.  There's nothing in coffee or tea or any caffeinated beverage that's necessary for our bodies to function, that we can't get from eating regular food.  We can live without caffeine. 

So anyway, I slowly decreased my coffee volume consumption while also slowly decreasing the strength of the coffee itself.  The last couple weeks were a cup or two with more than half decaff grounds.  AND YET, when I quit completely I still had a stupid headache and felt crappy. 

Now that I'm caffeine-free, I'd like to say I'm sleeping better and feel great.  But honestly I feel exactly the same as I always did, albeit a little less sweaty. #food

Hybrid work
We've entered the era of hybrid work, which is a combination of on-site work and remote work, and I gotta say, it's literally the worst of both worlds.  The benefits of on-site work are that you see people face-to-face and run into people in the hallway for impromptu chats.  The benefits of remote work are that you can concentrate distraction-free while not wearing pants.  Hybrid work, as it's currently implemented, is left to the worker to decide how to manage their on-site and remote days.  So some people choose to be in the office Monday and Wednesday; other people choose Tuesday and Thursday, etc.  What this means is that on any given day you're in the office, you have absolutely no guarantee that the people you want to see will be there.  Which means that not only is your presence completely wasted, you're also working in a distracting office and you had to put on pants to do so.  And to get in contact with people, you have to call or message them anyway, which is the exact same thing you would've done if you weren't in the office. #business

Older coworkers
I was talking to some coworkers and we were all noticing how certain people we work with have a hard time adopting new technology.  Here we are a few years into a pandemic-fueled remote work world, and some people are still learning how to share their screen in Microsoft Teams.  One coworker said it's because our generation (born in the 1980s) were the first generation with internet in our homes while we were in high school.  We're used to adapting to the ever-changing landscape of technology.  We remember a time before the internet, before smartphones, before social networks.  And as these new things came about, we (sometimes grudgingly) adopted them and incorporated them into our daily lives.  People who are even a few years older seem to have been almost left behind in the pre-digital age.  They write things on paper; they cold-call people without messaging them first; they have trouble with copying and pasting and emails.  It's weird how there's almost a generational gap in technological proficiency, and the age difference is sometimes less than 10 years.

Trunk lock issue
My current car's trunk has two methods of entry:  An electronic switch near the steering wheel, and a keyed lock on the trunk door.  Most normal cars also have a latch on the back seat, but mine doesn't. 

A few months ago, my battery died due to the interior light being left on overnight.  What happens when a car has a dead battery?  The electronic trunk release button doesn't work.  What happens when you live in a cold climate with road salt and a seldom used keyed lock?  It seizes.  So in the middle of winter, with a dead battery, I was unable to get the jumper cables from my trunk because the idiots who designed my car couldn't envision a scenario where this series of events could happen. 

It wasn't a huge deal because I borrowed my wife's car to go to a store to buy jumper cables, which she needed anyway.  But if someone, perhaps a small child, got stuck in my trunk, I have a hard time imagining the success rate of convincing said child to follow my instructions in locating and operating the glow-in-the-dark emergency trunk release lever (which thankfully my car does have).

Ownership
Ownership is kind of a made-up topic (side note:  everything is sort of made up because that's how society and culture work).  You can say you own something because you bought it from somebody, but why did they claim ownership?  Did they buy it from someone else?  Who was the original owner, and how did they claim ownership?  We don't typically ask these questions because we all collectively believe that if you claim to own something, you own it.  If someone creates something, they can claim they bought the raw materials from someone, but then they created something new which didn't exist before then.  So that new thing is owned by the creator of it. 

This isn't the case for something like natural resources or land, especially undeveloped land.  A person can claim ownership, but the person who originally owned it merely stated a claim.  In that sense, I don't think land can really be owned.  It can merely be borrowed, to plant crops or build houses.  Which begs the question, if you're not using your land for some purpose, do you really own it?  Should you?

Vacation mode
If I could define vacation mode for myself, it would be this:
Instead of going to a specific place at a specific time for a specific activity, I like to go in a general direction at an approximate time to maybe do something or maybe do nothing.
As a couple with kids once said to a childless me while laughing nostalgically, "We'll decide between now and then."  That's my goal when I'm on vacation. #travel

Project names
I work at a place that's bad at naming things.  We use a lot of acronyms, and project titles are handed down to us from higher up.  So we receive a project title which is usually a string of buzzwords, and due to our collective lack of creativity, we're left with a bunch of unpronounceable acronyms for project names like ERPM, ACGMT, and JEGL.  And even when our acronyms are pronounceable, we still screw it up.  Some people pronounced our project PEFM as "PIF-M," instead of HOW IT'S LITERALLY SPELLED, JERRY YOU IDIOT. 

A good project name should be a single pronounceable word, probably short, preferably two syllables or less.  A name like Quarterback is kind of long and awkward, but a name like Tailback just has a good ring to it.  If the name absolutely must have two words, it should be easily and nicely abbreviated.  And this should go without saying, but neither the word nor the abbreviation should be an obvious reference to a sex act. 

The name can either be relevant or irrelevant.  For example, the Air Force has the Eagle (F-15), the Falcon (F-16), and the Raptor (F-22), which are all named after birds of prey.  They chose a theme and stuck with it.  On the other hand, I've worked with organizations who chose project names like Deadlock or Override, which are literally just arbitrary titles which have no relation to anything.  But when you say, "I finished the Deadlock analysis," your coworkers know what you mean. 

The name should be decided upon as early as possible, and it should never change.  I just need something to call the folder that's storing all my files associated with this project.  I need a word to put at the beginning of my email titles. 

I've always been impressed by groups and companies that name things well.  I don't know if it's due to their marketing department, or simply having creative people around.  Oh well, back to work on PLOMPH. #business

Common symptoms
I feel like too many illnesses have the same symptoms.  If you have a runny nose, sore throat, headache, cough, sinus pressure, and/or a fever, you could have:  (a) the common cold, (b) COVID, (c) allergies, or (d) cancer.  The human body is like, "I don't know what to do about this, so I'm just gonna produce some mucus." #health

Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution is "the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time".  A simple example is fish and dolphins.  Fish didn't just become dolphins.  First a non-fish became a fish, then they exited the water, then they grew legs, then they re-entered the water, then they lost their legs.  Both fish and dolphins became water-dwelling fin-propelled animals at completely different points in history and in different branches of the tree of life. 

Pretty much every section of that Wikipedia page made my jaw drop, but the part about light skin color evolving twice was pretty cool. #science

American statistics
Whenever I hear a statistic about America or Americans, it's pretty much never true.  America isn't really a country, it's actually a shell company containing 50 smaller countries, each with its own economy, geography, and culture.  You can't say "America is mostly [X]" or "Americans are largely [Y]" because it's probably not true for the vast majority of the country, but because of how statistics work, it's sort of true in theory. 

I guess this sort of applies to any large heterogeneous group, and it's especially noticeable for the people who fall outside the norms of whatever statistic you're looking at. #math

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