Employed Millennial

So there I was reconciling my credit card statement and once again being flabbergasted at the breadth and volume of my tacqueria transactions, when I see an annual recurring charge from WordPress.com….

“What’s this?” say I, “Is something foul afoot?”

Then I remember, Oh yeah that blog you started but never followed up on, broken resolution number, let me check the records, 267! That thing.

Well now I have a leaner schedule and more free time, and its January again, let’s change that failed resolution #267 to a pending goal #8, and future failed resolution #273!

Aw, fuck it I still like the URL. If nothing else I am still the OG, Definitive, employed millennial.

 

We’ve all been there, that point of exhaustion that usually comes around 3:30 in in the afternoon or 8:30 at night when your computer is freezing, excel wont save and you’re about to quit your job; Its a nightmare. And in these moments of self doubt, some of us (myself  included) have turned to the magical, slightly disgusting, elixir that is 5-hour energy. From the days of yore, when i was trying to crank out that 30 page midterm to the night before, to the days of…..today, when I’m trying to crank out those 60 page project reports (which, when i put it like that is kind of depressing), these little bottles of  “oomph” have gotten me trough some rough times.

So imagine my pleasure when the founder of 5-Hour Enegery, Manoj Bhargava, was on one of my favorite podcasts, NPR’s “How I Built This”. Now, I think that you should all listen to the whole thing, it’s extremely interesting, but there were a few snippets that I found to be great.

1. On Business: Making a company profitable is all about common sense – focusing on what costs money and what make money. Ask the questions about why things cost what they do through fresh eyes and determine where waste is. As he said “If you use common sense, you’re in great shape, if you use experts then you’re in trouble.”
2. On experts: The overarching theme that came across was that “Experts are useless”. They have preconceived notions about what you need and what you can and cannot do; they tell you what NOT to do, but have no idea about what TO DO. he made and interesting point that most of the truly great inventions were made by non-expert outsiders who had a different perspective.
3. On branding: Bhargava maintains that you have “less than half a second” to convince a consumer to buy your product. So keep it simple stupid.
4. On Entrepreneurship: It’s all about failure and determination. According to Bhargava, you have to have three things to succeed as an entrepreneur,  “Use your common sense. You have to be totally determined. You need a sense of urgency; do it now, don’t delay”. This stuff seems pretty straightforward, but how many times have we pushed that idea off to the future because we didn’t know how to do it or said we could do it later? Even as someone who studies company operations AS MY ACTUAL JOB, I get bogged down in the minutia of whether or not I know enough to start – when really you can just start, make rational common sense operational decisions and it’ll probably work out. Or it won’t – at which point the advice about failure comes into play.

All in all, this was a great talk, one of my favorite episodes. Listen to the whole thing below.

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/519514841/519712175

If you follow tech news, privacy news, or any of the vast array of conspiracy theories available on Reddit (Like Me!), you have undoubtedly stumbled across the breaking story that Elon Musk, real life Iron Man and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, has started a company to either make you an immortal God.exe or literally copywrite and license your soul to GoogleAds, depending on who’s writing the article (see here and here for the articles going both ways).

Long story short, mad doctor Musk has started a new company Neuralink that aims to interface the human brain with computers to do all sorts of things from back up memories, enhance brain power, and help ameliorate all sorts of neurological disorders. As we know, Elon is quite concerned with the emergence of rogue, powerful AI’s that will destroy all humans, and I’m sure that this new company plays into his long term plan to help level the playing field against our greatest threat, pictured below.

Now all this seems good and find to me, in theory at least. Would I like to see cures to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s? Hell yeah! Would I want to live forever, my body in an indestructible drinking smoking robot (pictured above)? Right now yeah, that would be cool, but get back to me in 2500 years. Overall I am pro-technology, pro-knowledge and a techno libertarian, so I say swing for the fences Elon!

But here comes the but…..

As we have now come to see, there are upsides and downsides to new technologies that we can’t possibly foresee until they are here and widespread. For instance, take a the search engine google. What once was merely a tool for finding good thai restaurants is now as essential as breathing for everything from personal communications (gmail), navigation (maps), shopping, news, networking and countless other things, all run through your android phone. Everything you do is tracked and recorded, available for the Don’t-be-Evil company to review, analyze and distribute to whomever it sees fit. They are now using their ubiquitous nature to censor content, steer people from one viewpoint to another, and guide you mentality to BUY BUY BUY. It doesn’t take a genius to see how much power they’ve accrued, and how easily it could be abused.

Now enter the techno-god-emperor Musk. Whereas google only takes record of your peripheral actions (your searches, movements, communications, etc.) the type of technology noted above will track your internal ones. How much more dangerous is that? Would you trust a company to safeguard that data? And what the hell is in that user-end license agreement that I opted into when I got my TeslaBrainPhone anyways???

As with any new technology, we must consider the moral issues with it’s introduction. Unfortunately, we can’t truly know what the true cost of this technology will be here until it arrives (which is why you should read science fiction!!! [Note: link is dead because I haven’t written that article yet]). Who could of predicted the odd, introspective, alone-together depression caused by constant social media? Who knew that pornography would mean that most people’s most meaningful relationship is with a website?

I think that with anything else, this technology is amazing and should be explored…but we should be weary of its use. The long-term implications of recording personalities, backing up memories, reading thoughts…who knows what they could be? I’m already not a fan of how ingrained digital technology is in our lives, adding dream recorders and brain lace nets into the mix will only make SnapChat obsession that much worse.

I might have to make my own society (with hookers…and blackjack!)

In reading one of my favorite blogs Lifehacker, I saw this article about Anant Agarwal of edX, a really amazing online platform for  MOOCs (or massive open online courses) which are basically those college classes you cheat on, but for free, and not involuntary.

 

See below for a link to the whole article, but I thought there were two really poignant quotes from Agarwal. When asked about the best time-saving hack he had, the answer was surprising…

“That’s easy! Procrastinate. When it comes to work, my life hack is ‘if it can be postponed then postpone it.’”

Now while you might think this is a crappy way to save time, it actually makes sense. Our busy lives are full of things that don’t NEED to happen today or even tomorrow, and actually might be superseded by a different problem or task later; some low priority tasks can be batch processed with future high priority tasks if you let them stew a little bit.

The other interesting quote he had was regarding professional curiosity.

“The best advice I have ever received is to always act on your curiosity. Throughout my career, curiosity has served me well. The curiosity to start and develop [a local agricultural start-up] helped lead me to create several high-tech startups later on, and the importance of following your inquisitiveness has remained with me throughout my professional life.”

This is something that really resonates with me; in my line of work the projects can range greatly from one deal to the next. One week your looking at a food processing plant in Kentucky, the next a data-center in Portland, but you’d be surprised at how similar the problems and challenges faced by different companies are, and the deals  can really blend together. However, if the company really interests you for some reason, be it the field, product, structure or entrepreneur, those are a joy to work on. Being cognizant of what you find interesting and engaging is important to think about when you decide what to be when you grow up.

 

Source:  I’m Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX, and This Is How I Work

 

 

Day 2 of internet detox is just now ending. Ironic i know that I’m writing about this on my blog, but I have to tell someone about this accomplishment, and in this case it’s the collocation center hired by WordPress. If you’re sentient internet, I’m talking to you (I’m also talking to you about not talking to you, so yes that’s awkward and yes im sorry).

I am trying my damnedest to do an internet detox, and well by that I really mean a blog/news/twitter detox. I realized that my time spent on those things was a waste, and worse than being a waste was actually detracting from my life. So, yesterday, I just said screw it and haven’t looked since.  We’ll see how long I get.

Anyways, some random thoughts. News is most definitely like a drug; get a hit by walking past the tv blaring CNN in the lobby and you’re itching to read about it, or see reactions about it, or listen to a podcast or BLAAAAH. So in order to stop using, I’ve taken the following steps so far

1. Uninstall twitter from phone. Duh. I used to read literally first thing in the morning, like, still in bed, hit the alarm an scroll. Unhealthy. So that’s gone.
2. Stayfocud chrome plugin- had this for a while but now I’m taking it seriously.
3. Spending more time on social media. This sounds counter-intuitive, but i figure chatting with people who are real is slightly better than reading about people I’ll never meet.

 

lets hope we make it to day 3

So dear reader, once again it’s January and everyone and their mom is cramming into the nearest gym with hope of shedding that fourth slice of Costco pumpkin pie. For someone who’s been exercising in a gym since I was accidentally placed in football PE at 13 (if you saw me you’d know why this is funny), this is the absolute worst time of the year. A bunch of randos in ill-fitting work t-shirts blowing out their backs as they try in vain to lift a 25 lb barbell. Now I don’t want to be elitist…but Jesus people, watch a youtube video.

And so what’s the best way to get around this influx of newbs? Switching to the best workout you can do anywhere, one that I’ve been on for almost a year! “The Ultimate 90-Day Bodyweight Training Plan” (and no it hasn’t taken me a year to do a 90 plan you a-holes).

This plan over on Breaking Muscle (groan) is awesome for a number of reasons; let me extoll its virtues:

1. This plan is great for people who travel. As someone who finds himself in the boondocks of America with frightening regularity, it’s hard to keep a consistent workout regimen. With this plan though you can work out in a hotel, airport, public park, pretty much anywhere any time.
2. You can ditch the gym completely. If you want to avoid the resolutionists in January (they’ll be gone by Feb, trust fam), this plan lets you avoid them until they give up and run back to the cheesecake factory. Especially in a big, urban area, its super nice to run to a nearby park and enjoy a bit of greenery while you grunt through your push-ups.
3. It’s endlessly varied. I love that you can mix and match the exercises based on what you like and what you’re comfortable doing in public (honestly, some of the exercises look pretty god damned stupid). At the end of each month, you can add more exercises or swap in more complex ones, but you probably will want to do some of the late month stuff in the privacy of your own closet. I mean, look at this asshole.

4.  Tracking your dailies motivates the hell out of you. Even though I’m an excel nerd and compulsively need to track everything, recording your workout reps and trying to do more every day really does help you go the extra mile

5.  This workout plan actually makes works. Most exercise plans isolate one muscle group per day, and make you wait for a bench/machine/torture rack while someone else is wrapping up. This regimen? No waiting. No bullshit. And you know what that means? You actually get a good workout instead of  just milling around the gym trying not to look dumb. And you know what? I’m a decade veteran of free weights…and this workout has gotten me into better shape than I’ve ever been.

Now you may be skeptical, you may be apprehensive. But Mr. Employed? Isn’t it weight gaining season? Aren’t body-weight exercises for crossfit assholes?

My answer is shut up. Just try it out, and you’ll be doing shirtless handstands in a public park before you know it.

 

Or maybe that’s just me.

 

Part of living in San Francisco is coming to terms with the exorbitant price of living here; just now I was at a hoity toity speak easy bar with a killer sales pitch of not being allowed inside without a password off of a random word generator (just like this blog title!), buying 14 dollar cocktails and enjoying the novelty of drinking inside a fake library. The city is full of these little delights, dark corners with high prices and once in a Monday experiences. The issue is that you can only keep living la dulce vida for so long, and damn if the more you make the more you spend.

And so I present to you reader(s), “Light Pockets” – an amalgamation of cost saving activities, recipes, diversions, and whatever I feel like posting under the tag. If you don’t like the breadth of it, well fuck off this is my blog.

One of the easiest ways to pinch pennies for any aspiring billionaire playboy is to learn a few simple, 5 ingredient recipes that fill the stomach, stimulate the tongue and don’t look too shitty on instagram. And so I present to you Las Enchiladas de Pollo Borchornoso.

You will need:

1. Whole rotisserie chicken (day old chickens bought cold from the deli – $5)
2. 1 Bottle Green enchilada Sauce ($2-4)
3. 1 package Mexican cheese mix ($2-4)
4. 1 package California Chile Powder ($1)
5. 1 package taco sized corn tortillas
6. One half onion – diced
7. Tapatillo
8. 1 Twelve pack Pacifico ($figure it out)

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes, 400 Degrees in Oven

Direcciones:

1. Crack your first pacifico.
2. Remove all meat from the rotisserie chicken. Eat one wing and one leg while no one is looking.
3. Shred the remaining chicken.
4. Crack your second pacifico
5. Mix shredded chicken, diced onion, and a few dashes of tapatillo in a bowl. Mix in chile powder to taste.
6. Cry due to onion
7. Roll onion/chicken/spice mix into tortillas. Place in a shallow, foil lined tray.
8. When oven is heated, pour green enchilada sauce over rolled tortilas. Sprinkle with cheese, and place in oven.
9. Crack your third pacifico

Intermission:

 

In about 15 minutes, your enchiladas should be ready to go. Crack your fourth Pacifico, and enjoy.

Stay classy friends.