What do parents of small children, office minions workers on a deadline and Dieter Stark facing Compys (alright, Compsognathus, if you say) have in common? No? A situation they thought they had in control, which rapidly spiraled into a situation they did not have in control.
Simple things, small things and innocuous things have this way about them. Like the last time I had to work on something which, the way these things usually go, just had to go right that evening. Now, for people with Hyper Attention Deficit Syndrome (HADS) (no, no, not ADHD; HADS, as in ‘I had HADS as a child’ which is widely known to result in stern looks from grammar teacher type people), the most scientific way to get any work done is to stimulate the brain enough while slogging through the aforementioned disagreeable task at hand so as to con it into believing that it shall shortly progress to more pleasurable activities and hence, race after work like greyhounds after the rabbit.
Since adhering to scientific principles has always been a pet of mine, I decided to apply this to my previously mentioned task at hand. Quickly were the songs culled, the playlist setup and winamp typed into the Run command box. For a good 6 minutes and 27 seconds (I have a digital watch on my desktop, ha!) everything was in control. Up came ‘World in Union’ in the playlist.
Even before I had noticed despite the not too subtle pointed looks from various co-minions workers, I was singing along (to the World in Union – various artists version with lots of yodeling and hence the pointed looks I would assume). Unfortunately, halfway through a particularly trying yodel, just as I lost track of what was being sung, a sharp reminder about task at hand was lobbed into my direction. With a most reassuring smile which blinked ‘I have everything under control’, as all good sing-alongers would know, I alt+y ed in Winamp.
Now, since most of my music is downloaded by a friend from peer to peer networks (I shall even swear to this if needed), the ID3v1 metadata is usually meant for human beings to figure out the song is question which alas, was not good enough for the plug-in bot. After a few rather lame attempts at ignoring the greater call and singing along to made up lyrics, I decided to waste a minute quantity of a minute and Googled the lyrics. Alas, the evil corporate firewall, aiming at preventing precisely the wasting of such minute minutes, showed me the blue screen of forbidden things.
Beaten, I almost got back to task at hand until the small wiggle at the back of head started to ping around in my head. Deciding to waste a few more of those minutes, I was now looking at ways to peep over the firewall. While I did find what I wanted eventually, Winamp which waits for neither the listener nor corporate firewalls was already onto the next track. Wham! The stupid metadata nazi had to show his ugly mug again.
All was well with me pounding away at Google, song after song until the Compys struck. The deadline went by, the situation was overwhelmingly out of control and task at hand was relegated to the list of things that did not get done today. Moral of the story? As harassed parents, office minions and poor Dieter Stark, if he were alive, would have told you, be nice to ‘situations’, heed your inner voice telling you to run and stick to task at hand without indulging your HADS impulses.
