That was nifty!

I sometimes give the impression that work is one big pile of pain and screamings.

This really isn't the case - it's just that people would be very bored by "I went to work, did my job without any big SNAFUs, had a quiet lunch, and read a bit" in my journal every day.

However, we did have something really neat happen yesterday that I thought I'd mention.

We're kicking off a new product and doing a big launch at our Customer Connection conference this week. For the first time, everyone in the company who wasn't at this conference was asked to go to an auditorium in their area, watch live on satellite, and get a free lunch out of the deal.

What makes this more than a big corporate feelgood was that the keynote speaker was a guy named Bran Ferren.

Bran happened to be a really, really captivating speaker, and while at the moment he's just a "consultant" and head of a company called Applied Minds, he's probably better known (if you've ever heard of him, which honestly I hadn't until they gave us a blurb about him) as having been the head of Walt Disney Imagineering for quite a few years.. Listening about how big ideas work, and this really neat tangent about how technology grows and evolves, and how to take advantage of things, was a lot of fun.

His big theme that he (kinda) wrapped his keynote around was that meaningful communication of any kind revolves around telling stories, and that's what drove invention of things like Language, Writing, and things right up to the Internet that "Changed Everything."

He also had a lot of big goofy whiteboard stuff, and made the arguement for why Powerpoint should be banished to the plane of Leng, so that was pretty awesome.

I'm rambling, but so did he, and it's very hard to put a 2 hour keynote and distill it down. Hopefully work puts out a video of it that I can youtube or something, because I think a lot of you would enjoy watching it.

(no subject)

So, there's a bunch of talk going on about the Peca signing and what the Jackets lines will look like, including the rumor that Zherdev may be worked out as a centre.

I've seen two potential lineups that make a lot of sense to me, barring something unexpected at Training Camp.

#1

Nash-Feds-Vybes
Modin-Peca-Zherdev
Chimera-Novotny-Fritsche
Konopka OR Shelley- Beech OR Malhotra-Picard (if healthy) OR Platt

Klesla-Hejda
Foote-OKT
Westcott-Hainsey

#2

Nash-Feds-Zherdev
Modin-Brule-Vyborny
Chimera-Peca-Fritsche
Shelly-Novotny-Platt

Klesla-Westcott
Foote-OKT
Hejda-Hainsey

I would be happy seeing either of these as long as it means production on the ice!

...does anyone else do this, or am I just weird?

I had to go back into my journal's archive to find something I wanted to show mscongeniality, earlier tonight.

Since then, I've just been casually scrolling through the last 4 months or so in my journal, reading the comments on some entries, skipping others, generally skimming.

It's like putting my life on replay. It's a little weird, but interesting at the same time.

I post a lot of fluff, then major events (good or bad), then fluff, then quiet, then major events again. Mostly fluff.