Jordan Rinke » JordanRinke

Must see movies for any geek.

JordanRinke — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:50:30 +0000

A friend recently had some free time to geek out and enjoy himself, he decided the best way to relax would be movies and video games. He had seen most of the must see / great movies etc so we decided to send an email out to everyone at work and ask them for a list of their must see movies. I qualified my question by asking for must see movies for a “geek dude”. Below is the list of movies I received, I have included anything that was part of a franchise so for instance if someone suggested Alien, then I included Aliens, Aliens3 and Alien Resurrection. I know there will be some grumbling about this but this is my blog and I think people should see an entire franchise even if some people thinks one or more of the films suck. Having said that, there are some movies on this list that I personally think aren’t worth watching… however movie reviews are such subjective things I have included them since they were recommended and who knows you might love them.

Admittedly not all the movies are geek specific, some are obscure, or interesting, horrific or hilarious etc. I think this ended up being a list of movies recommended by geeks instead of specifically for geeks hah.

If you have movies that should be on this list that have not been included, please post up in the comments and I will update the list to be as complete as possible.

Daily ToDo lists vs Perpetual ToDo lists?

JordanRinke — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:41:47 +0000

I have been trying to review material on todo lists and various life management aspects, I still have a lot of material to read, review, and contemplate but I am curious what everyone elses thoughts (and reading recommendations are) in regards to the topic. My manager Grant Herbon made a very insightful observation recently that the key to time/life management is simply using whatever system works best for you, with that in mind, what system works best for you?

The internal debate I am having right now (before even selecting a method/presentation medium) is if todo lists should be a time limited thing daily, weekly etc. or if they should be a perpetual list just consumed in small chunks. Where the perpetual todo list concept comes from is a period in my life when I practiced polyphasic sleep. Basically ever 4 hours I slept for 15 minutes for a total of 2 hours asleep per day, I did this for a number of months. One of the most interesting things that I observed while on that sleep schedule was a nearly continuous stream of consciousness and also the disappearance of the concept of completing stuff within a day proper. My todo list became a number of 4 hour long sprints and the list as a whole became a long list of things that were then broken down and consumed in 4 hours chunks. Not effective for a normal schedule but conceptually it interests me which leads me to where I am now. Trying to evaluate the systems that exist, and deciding if some modified perpetual program would be effective long term. Maybe something like this exists already and I just haven’t found the proper publication, or maybe I will end up with a blend of ideas. Much research is still needed but I am very interested to hear your thoughts and recommendations on the topics. I know that many of you who read this randomly when I actually post are very driven and successful people so I would love to hear from you.

(Most people find the polyphasic sleep stuff odd/interesting as well so I am totally open to comment/discussion around that as well if you have any questions)

Stepping it up

JordanRinke — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:49:32 +0000

And by stepping it up I mean here is another blog post 40 days later! woooo!

Wow

JordanRinke — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:07:23 +0000

I just realized that I haven’t posted a public blog post in over 6 months. What a boring blog. I will try to step it up.

Honesty != Brutal Honesty

JordanRinke — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:28:17 +0000

A recent conversation made me feel the need to speak about my opinion on the difference between simple honesty and brutal honesty. I believe that honesty is always welcomed and brutal honesty is never needed. What is the difference you ask? Well, brutal honesty implies a certain level of malice (to me at least). For example (albeit an extremely generic and over used one)… someone asks “Do these pants make me look fat?” An honest response could be “well, they aren’t the most flattering pants”, but a brutally honest response could simply be “yes”. There is a subtle difference, both are true statements, it is simply the delivery. You could take brutal honesty to an extreme by adding an insult to the statement (as some do) but regardless it isn’t necessary. Using the guise of honesty to convey an insult is cowardly in my opinion. I am annoyed by people who use “brutal honesty” as an excuse to be an asshole.

Just my two cents on the subject; always be transparent and honest, just choose the right delivery method. If you ever find yourself saying you were brutally honest take note you might have just been a complete jackass (purposefully or not).

Article from MSN: “The Worst Interview Faux Pas” – Pisses me off

JordanRinke — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:59:51 +0000

So I just read this article http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2051-Interviewing-The-Worst-Interview-Faux-Pas since I have a few friends interviewing at different places and I was curious if it was worth forwarding out. For the most part it is a reasonable article but there are two very specific topics that really pissed me off when I read it.

Section 6: Poor Presentation, 3rd quote.

“I once had a recent graduate who looked fantastic on paper, but showed up wearing flip-flops. During the interview, he would lean back in his chair, flex his hands over his head and he even said several curse words in his responses. It was so bad I e-mailed him afterwards to point out his most obvious blunders!” – Nickie Doria, marketing director for Emmer Development Corp.

Reading this quote actually made me think “Fuck You”. Sure, I wore a suit to my interview for my current employer (whom I love and where I now wear flip-flops to work most days) to show respect but it probably wasn’t essential. They were hiring a specific talent, not a specific look. I am pretty sure I leaned back in my chair a bit since I was at ease and relaxed mostly. I avoided the F bomb or anything similar but even having that requirement is absurd. If you are hiring an adult, to do grown up things… language and attire should be no limitation. I will avoid my rant on curse words since I am strongly opinionated and could dedicate an entire post to that alone. The pretentious attitude that is conveyed in this quote really gets me fired up. So the gist of this one for me is… treat adults like adults, companies with restrictions and limitations so strict they are essentially treating their workforce like children strangle their talent in my opinion. To the dude above that didn’t get the job… you didn’t really want to work there anyways (hah, like he will ever see my blog but whatever)

Section 8: Forgetting to clean up digital dirt, The entire section.

“Of course, for those who are MySpace and Facebook junkies, make sure your pages are set to the private setting. We actually had a girl apply for a leasing position with one of our companies, and she did very well during the interview. Later, the manager wanted to learn more about her, and found that her MySpace name was … well somewhat promiscuous at best! Needless to say, she never even got a call back! – Doria

Seriously, I want to slap this person. Who cares if she is a slut (what I get from the implication above)? That has nothing to do with her work. If she can close leases on properties fast enough to meet or beat quota then I don’t give a damn if she spends her weekend snorting coke off a bathroom urinal while getting double penetrated by Ron Jeremy and Peter North (to the people who instantly knew those names… you are sick, of course I referenced them so what does that say about me?). Someone’s personal life should not be a consideration in their employment. Sure, it can be a benefit for instance a digital designer who happens to have a large online gallery; but it should never detract. People who look at a facebook page and think oh noes, they have pictures playing beer pong… to them I say they are hypocrites. They do/did the same shit, they just don’t have the balls to take a picture of it and post it online for everyone to see the real them. Again, this one angers me because personal and work time are entirely different.

Sure, if there was a picture of them pissing in the coffee at work, that would be different… that directly affects them in a job related manner. However, if my picture is from a going away party for friend, where I happened to be chugging beer from a beer bong and couldn’t exactly stand up straight while doing it… well that shouldn’t matter. Tell me how doing that on a Friday night makes me less capable on Monday morning? If anything you should be worried about people who DO clean up their online digital presence, it means they believe they have something to hide and are willing to do so. Who do you want to hire… someone who believes they may be doing something wrong or unsavory but they are willing to simply hide it from you and attempt to live two separate lives essentially lying about their true nature OR someone who is open and honest with who and what they are and they embrace it?

Conclusion

The “conventional wisdom” relayed in the above statements really drives me nuts. We live in a free country but people’s personalities are so oppressed in the business culture (I will avoid another rant about this that could be another blog post). Companies that are growing, thriving, changing the world… I like to think they throw this “wisdom” out of the window and look at what the people they are interviewing can actually do while they are at work. Not how they look when they get to work, or what they do when they aren’t at work… neither of those matter. People who believe they do matter, are living in an age that has passed and will slowly die as they do.

First Post

JordanRinke — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:54:25 +0000

Just a quick post, blog is back up etc… I will work on the custom theme and some other stuff this or next weekend.