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Thanks to a pile of work and some poorly-placed meetings, I ended up taking a rather late lunch on Friday. On most other days, my lunch break would be spent enjoying conversations with colleagues or taking in a walk around the picturesque village into which our little corner of GM is tucked away. But on this particular Friday, walking into the cafeteria a little after 1PM, I found myself eating solo.

Which gave me a chance read a few pages of the Wall Street Journal while I waited for my soup to warm up.

Which kind of made me lose my appetite…

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It’s a term we use a lot at work, a favorite of my boss – summarizing the tendency for the scope of things like meetings, projects or work assignments to “creep” out of their boundaries and become unmanageable. But reading Mike Johnston’s latest sunday sermon over at The Online Photographer made me think of it in a different light.

Mike’s essay on “The Proximity Effect” postulates that each of our human experiences is limited to that which we see around us – or Own Little World as defined by our present surroundings – and that the rest of the universe falls into obscurity and relative smallness as we reach the limits of our tiny brains’ capacities for comprehension.

No offense to Mike, but I typically enjoy a markedly different experience…

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If the bugs that overrun Microsoft’s operating systems aren’t enough to make you switch to Linux…

If the incessant security holes, virus warnings and spyware susceptibilities aren’t enough to make you switch to Linux…

If freeze-ups and blue-screens-of-death aren’t enough to make you switch to Linux…

If Vista’s invasion into your privacy and trampling of your rights to use what you’ve rightfully purchased aren’t enough to make you switch to Linux…

…maybe this will be: Microsoft’s “Clippy” hits the streets

Seriously, watch it to the end. It’s worth it.

One morning this past week, I woke up with the annoying hold music from the Lumber Liquidators customer service line stuck in my head. As I hummed begrudgingly though the tune in the shower, I started recalling some of the voice ads they inserted (rather poorly, I might add) over the music. One was from carpenter/model/actor Ty Pennington, talking about how much he loves using flooring from Lumber Liquidators on his job sites.

Today, Andy’s latest post reminded me of the idea that started nagging me that morning. In Ty’s voice ad spot, he said something along the lines of, “There’s nothing I love more than when a project comes out right…”

That’s a problem for me. And it’s everywhere. People speaking in absolutes, exaggerating the things they’re saying – and as a result, watering down the power of the spoken word.

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