JustinLL dot Com

May 22, 2009

Don't Stand For Being Seated

Filed under: General — Tags: — JustinLL @ 1:21 am

It’s true, I can’t handle folks who speak from a seated position when presenting to an audience from what should be an authoritative stance.  If you have the stage, then you should control the stage and all the space that goes along with it.  I suppose this is a problem more for panel presentations where there are a few, um…experts, sharing the spotlight.  But if it’s not the Q&A portion of the show, whoever is speaking should stand up and shout to the back of the room, even if there are only seven people in the audience.

When it’s my turn, I’ll ask (for the sake of being polite) the moderator if it’s okay for me to stand because "I have a proclivity for exaggerated gesticulation when I present that is greatly hindered from a seated position."  In which case everyone is confused and the moderator replies, "yes, that would be fine."  (Well, many people are confused most of the time by nature, which has little to do with my presence or line of questioning.)  So I take the floor, the mic, the remote (PowerPoint), and whatever else I need so as to ensure everyone is not only watching, but also listening, because I’m the expert and you all better be paying attention.

Let’s get serious here for a minute, this is an issue of confidence, not to be confused with arrogance, that by standing to demand attention tells the audience you’re worthy of their time and attention.  (Or at least you believe yourself worthy, and most likely rightfully so.)  The truth being that everyone knows something other people don’t.  And if someone has invited you to present your knowledge and experience, then that person values your time and attention.  So don’t cower to the crowd and hide in the shadows.

The same can be said for the audience.  Please get off your ass and stand up to ask your question so that the entire room can hear what you’re saying.  (We have two hundred people in the room tonight, can you please repeat the question.)  There’s a pretty good chance that your concern is shared by others, and if it’s not, then you should be pelted with rotten tomatoes.  But don’t take it personally.  Learn.

And I could go off on another tangent (but I realize I’m already rambling on) about how people are too…well, let’s just leave it at that.

Your knowledge is valuable — stand up and share it! Kick your chair, too, if you’re really feeling the power of controlling center stage.  Oh yeah

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February 26, 2009

Luigi's Pizza By The Slice

Filed under: General — Tags: , — JustinLL @ 10:43 pm

Get there before it closes and check out the fungarden, if you’re into that sort of thing.  Otherwise, just enjoy the pizza.

Update: When I wrote this, I meant get to convey that people should get to Luigi’s before it closed for the night, not before it closed indefinitely. As far as I know, they are doing quite well and are in no danger of shutting their doors for good.  A slice and a soda is still the way to go.

February 12, 2009

What's The Point?

Filed under: General — Tags: , — JustinLL @ 11:38 pm

It doesn’t count to blag everyday if you’re not going to take it seriously and write something you’ve thought about, right?  Except, you can’t write it without first thinking, even if only long enough to get the message from your head to your fingers.  So it goes.

February 8, 2009

Sunday Slow Day, Let's Take A Break Day

Filed under: General — Tags: , — JustinLL @ 7:22 pm

While most Sundays are lazy share days, this here Sunday is a let’s take a rest day, so I’m shutting it down.  A break.  A sigh. And  a laugh.

Back tomorrow with further more and whatever we’re selling.  In the meanwhile, watch as I want this rest and nap.

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November 19, 2008

A Week's Worth Of 50-Word Posts

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — JustinLL @ 1:01 am

It’s tough when you know you’re not going to allow for the necessary word count to fully explain a thought or idea, but it’s a fun challenge to say as much as possible, as clearly as possible, in a limited space.  The most attractive piece being the lack of pressure to completely fill the empty space.  Being tied to a maximum amount of words, created a more inviting environment for jotting quick thoughts.  I guess that’s the intent of micro blogging, except you only have a 140 characters, which isn’t quite enough to get 50 words.

A couple of the posts were worse off than the rest (There were only four or five, right?).  My Book Meme post not only left off Leah Culver’s Book Meme post , but should have instructed the reader to post the sentence in his own blog; a result of my shrinking the instructions to leave room for my own comment at the bottom of the post.  There just wasn’t space to say all I wanted.  Anyhow, a Book Meme search is pretty neat.

The second suffering post was that of my Google’s no good at social media post, and shouldn’t bother with acquiring Twitter.  Clearly, a point of view that requires a bit of elaboration supporting the claim.  Which is to say, that it’s work to write a full entry for such a topic.  I’ve put it on my follow-up list, and it involves things like Orkut, Lively, and PicasaWeb.  We’ll get there, don’t worry.

I enjoyed it.  It was an interesting exercise.  I had a handful of short posts I meant to write, but never got around to (as usual).  I’ll now be less concerned with my word counts, be they more or fewer.

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September 30, 2008

"Impression Of A Normal Guy"

Filed under: General — Tags: — JustinLL @ 11:59 pm

Jake and Amir from JakeandAmir dot com nailed it in their most recent video "Impersonation" where, after first bickering about whether or not it would be better to have an infinity amount of chicken nuggets or an infinity amount of money, Amir goes on to give what he calls an "impression of a normal guy".  I don’t want to ruin it for you, so you should probably give it a view before reading on.  You’ll want to form your own opinion about it before I prattle on.

Fair enough.

I don’t know what it is about normal that I find so uninteresting, or what it is that makes it so easy to poke fun around.  (Unless we’re talking about the normal vector, which is a line perpendicular to a plane.  That’s not easy to poke fun around nor is it uninteresting.  However, it is completely off topic, so save your advanced math questions for another time.)  And in finding it so uninteresting, it thereby becomes very interesting.  Strange how that works, right?

It’s true, though, as Amir displays it — normal people give boring monologues and aren’t terribly great for dialogues either.  Reminds me of a conversation I was having with a woman just the other day, where I was going on and on about this and that only to realize I was talking nonsensical circles about life in a far away future, so when I finally paused long enough for her to respond all she could ask was, "what are you doing in the woman’s restroom?"  Seems I was too busy talking to notice I’d lost track of the person I was following.

Not the point.  Watch the video.  Throw these guys in your feed reader.  Enjoy the show!

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August 18, 2008

Vacationing Or Working, I'll Decide

Filed under: General — JustinLL @ 1:59 am

So I’ve been out and about, away and such, for a almost eight days, and I’m just now returning to the home where I lay my head to rest peacefully most nights.  I probably should have given some advanced notice, but I didn’t make time before venturing off to Portland for a bit of birthday bashing and celebrating, then making my way to a family camping trip in the Crystal Basin Recreation Area of Northern California, and rounding it all out with a four-day, out-of-town seminar for work.  You could try to imagine the fatigue, and whatever else, I’m experiencing at the moment, but I’d suggest not worrying about that.  (I’ll do that for all of us.)  Do know, though, that I have returned and I’m fully committed to getting this writing stuff back on schedule.  So let us be to rest, and we’ll meet again Wednesday.

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July 16, 2008

It's Being Done Differently Now

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — JustinLL @ 12:31 am

It was time.  I had to do it.  I changed the site layout, or “theme” as it is referred to in the loop.  I’m announcing this obvious fact for the folks in the feed-readers; they can’t see a layout change.  For the most part, at least.

Anyhow, like I was saying.  It was time.  The previous layout was too dark and difficult to read (look at.)  I’m not a fan of sites that use light-colored text on dark backgrounds.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the _look_ of it, but it does not read well.  If you’re planning to have anyone read your stuff, it needs to be easy on the eyes.  I don’t want to get into a long UI discussion (although, maybe I should), but trust me when I say that this new layout is much better.

I’m not sure if the spark for change came from a talk I had with a fellow blogger, or a conversation I had with a colleague about her business’s web site.  Probably it was a combination of the two and, either way, it sent me out tinkering with all sorts of pre-developed WordPress themes.  (An added bonus to using WordPress is the many site layouts that are freely available for personal use.)  After several hours of working with Gimp and creating my own CSS from scratch, I decided it was a better idea, and also much quicker, to mash together a bunch of already existing lines of code.  (Why re-invent the wheel, just make it more round.  What?  I mean make it roll farther.)

This was only half my problem.  I spent a bit of time this evening, searching for a reason as to why my PHP was not working with WordPress 2.6, which I had hesitantly upgraded the site to late Monday evening after trying it on another site I host.  2.6 was working great everywhere I used it, with all my plugins in tact and new features working flawlessly.  But then I loaded up my new layout, which, silly me, I was testing locally on a linux box running WordPress 2.5.  (Imagine that!  It was working in one set of conditions, but not another.)  “Warning!”  “Error!”  “the function() requires a string at line 18.”  Oh my.

What I’m getting at, is that there are going to be some kinks for a few minutes, and I’m doing my best to work those out of the mix.  So, if you would be kind enough, bear with me a minute or two, and, if you notice any errors, please draw them to my attention so I can remedy the situation.  I’m just getting back into the old smell of PHP and, honestly, I was never a CSS fan.  However, it’s proving to make a whole lot of sense now that I’ve plopped myself in the world of web site development. (Is it still a client if you do the work for free?)

I’ll leave you with it so I can get back to it.  My next goal is to clean up the tags and categories.  Both of these are useful tools when used correctly, but we’ll have to let that sit a moment.

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