Lighten up, dude!

When a colleague emailed this morning and asked for reminders of what we'd discussed yesterday, face-to-face, in a global locale that may have been a tertiary or quaternary target the day that Nagasaki got a-bombed, I sort of went ballistic. Here's an annotated snippet of what I wrote back:

Tabula rasa, man, tabula rasa;1 let me twang your synapses!

You dutifully promised and faithfully engaged to:

a. Always bring a pulp and fiber-based notebook and indelible ink pen with you when you visit my office, and have them handy whenever you call;

b. Begin immediately listing to-do's in your notebook the moment that they spring to mind, because if you don't write your thoughts down, they may as well never have happened;2

c. Carefully annotate those to-do's as to whom you'll need to involve, what resources to obtain and distribute, and when you expect to do so;

d. Deliberately and diligently transfer all [pen & paper] notes to a byte-based format at your earliest convenience, supplementing them with electronic ticklers (reminders) as necessary;

e. Endeavor to duck and cover your pulp and fiber notebook at the earliest hint of an EMP,3 and soak the notebook with urine in case of subsequent firestorms;

...

r. Remember that all data stored electronically can be wiped out faster than ink dries.

...

Personal correspondence
February 1, 2007, 09:59:45 JST
Re: Success (L2 writing...)

Of course the colleague never promised to do any of that, but it should serve as a reminder!


Notes

1. Tabula rasa (Wikipedia): blank slate;
2. The bit about writing it down or it never happened is a long lost reference to a Tom Clancy novel;
3. EMP: Electromagnetic pulse (Wikipedia).