—Mario Andretti

There’s many words and phrases I hear people misuse on a daily basis.

Today it’s being fired versus being laid off.

They’re not the same thing.

When you’re fired from a job, the connotation is that you, as an employee, did something wrong. You acted out in the wrong manner, or your performance dropped or your actions went against what is accepted and appropriate in the workplace.

What I find in most cases where someone says they were “fired” is the person in question is being terminated because of reasons other than their actions or performance. They’re being terminated because of downsizing, or redundancy due to a merger or a company closing it’s doors. A person being terminated in the last 3 examples I gave are not being fired, they’re being laid off.

“Fired” has a very negative connotation to it. If you use it, make sure it’s in the proper context.

A good rule of thumb to determine if someone was fired:

If there’s a really juicy story on why they were terminated, then they were probably fired.

Taken from The Combustion Chamber

via Automobile Magazine

My wife got us both Nike FuelBands recently and I started using mine today. Mike Mulvey enters the age of the quantified self.

The first step is setting up your Nike+ account, letting the system know your age, height, weight and sex. You wear the FuelBand around your wrist and it tracks your movements throughout the day via accelerometer sensors not unlike like the ones detecting orientation in iPhones and iPads. Your body stats, combined with your movements, translate to a Nike ‘Fuel’ score along with calories burned and steps taken.

Continue…

So good.

Jerry Seinfeld and Sony Pictures Television are doing a second season of “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee”.

Daily Exhaust rejoices.

The NDP Group says, “Despite the hype, and hope, around the launch of Windows 8, the new operating system did little to boost holiday sales or improve the year-long Windows notebook sales decline.”

Was Steve Jobs not clear when he said we were entering the Post-PC era back in 2010 (jump to 45 minutes 20 seconds)?

Windows 8 isn’t going to change that. Deal with it.

Link via The Verge

Nick Bilton writing about the F.A.A.’s bullshit rules for electronic devices on planes:

Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.

My frustrations with flying rise in direct correlation with each year that passes without changes to F.A.A. regulations as it pertains to “portable electronics” on planes. Watch the first minute of the film, The Graduate. We’re still stuck in the 1960’s when it comes to flying.

If cellphones and iPads and laptops had the potential to cause disruptions to a plane’s communications systems they wouldn’t just trust passengers to power down their devices. They’d implement hardware and/or software to guarantee nothing interfered with the plane’s avionics. In my mind, it would be something along the lines of how magnetic shielding works.

I rarely power down my iPhone, let alone my iPad before take-off and I’m willing to bet money half, if not more, of the passengers on any given flight don’t either.It’s a horseshit, antiquated rule and it needs to change.

A little New Year’s Day tip: Don’t try to watch Steven Spielberg’s two-and-a-half-hour-long Lincoln New Year’s Morning.

I found my brain was unable to comprehend at least 90% of it—even while laying down in my big, comfortable hotel bed.

And if you’re like me and love pretty much any movie Daniel Day-Lewis touches, don’t be surprised if you find yourself unengaged with Lincoln. This has less to do with the quality of Mr. Lewis’s acting (which is still top-notch) and more with how dense the plot is.

I think Lincoln is an amazing character study, but a bad movie. For pure entertainment purposes (and less historical accuracy) I’ll take Gangs of New York or There Will Be Blood over Lincoln any day of the week.

MacRumors is reporting some troubling news for 2013:

Some iOS 6 users who use Apple’s scheduled “Do Not Disturb” feature may find that their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch hasn’t automatically disabled the feature on New Year’s morning.

First world problems.