My Workstation Quotes

While some people might work in their bedrooms, I sleep in my workstation. It's very different.

We could simply have used any of a number of reasonably priced handheld devices that train people to slow their breathing and synchronize it with their heart rate, resulting in a state of “cardiac coherence” like the pattern shown in the first illustration above.9 Today there are a variety of apps that can help improve HRV with the aid of a smartphone.10 In our clinic we have workstations where patients can train their HRV, and I urge all my patients who, for one reason or another, cannot practice yoga, martial arts, or qigong to train themselves at home. (See Resources for more information.)

Yep,' she said, 'while some people might work in their bedrooms, I sleep in my workstation. It's very different.

Arriving Early Before anybody comes Waiting in the cubicle On my own Listening to the far sounds of the busy streets People – their jobs engraved on their faces Doctors looking sick Engineers with structured contours Writers with eyes the size of softballs bulging with desire and intensity no more wasting energy on drugs or booze But the ultimate detachment from a monotone existence would be to have the liberty to move on Walk tall and stand your ground or else you will lose it all in one handshake

God, please don’t make me go blind This job bites Nothing ever stays the same My ears hurt My lobes once beautiful and tender, now flaky with pain red with burning intensity My elbows feel weird exposed to the universe of hardwood and panel My eyes Oh, God, I love my eyes They are the foundation on which I built my papier kingdom on which I am the high priestess and the shrewd mistress If an owl cannot see describe prescribe then what remains of the night queen? God, please don’t make me go blind For blind is on the list of what it means not to be Me

The Routine… ...is not a scene from Alfonso Cuarón’s movie nor a part in Roger Waters “The Wall” Orson Welles might have come close with Kafkaesque nightmares But I beg to differ Routine is ungraspable, unexplainable It is more than just a row of robotic, faceless humanoid figures and less Panem-like It is the tick of an imaginary clock the unprecedented passing time The lure behind the lore Gravitational, earthquake-ish and magnanimous I look at the world and there it is going around in constant rhythms But here I am trapped in the tiniest corner of the tightest corners working my brains out, my fingers, my nimble soul Each to his own Each to his back David and Goliath style How do you wait when the wait is the fate of the unsure? How do you pretend to dream? How do you live in the now when the NOW is all there is to live

All the many successes and extraordinary accomplishments of the Gemini still left NASA’s leadership in a quandary. The question voiced in various expressions cut to the heart of the problem: “How can we send men to the moon, no matter how well they fly their ships, if they’re pretty helpless when they get there? We’ve racked up rendezvous, docking, double-teaming the spacecraft, starting, stopping, and restarting engines; we’ve done all that. But these guys simply cannot work outside their ships without exhausting themselves and risking both their lives and their mission. We’ve got to come up with a solution, and quick!” One manned Gemini mission remained on the flight schedule. Veteran Jim Lovell would command the Gemini 12, and his space-walking pilot would be Buzz Aldrin, who built on the experience of the others to address all problems with incredible depth and finesse. He took along with him on his mission special devices like a wrist tether and a tether constructed in the same fashion as one that window washers use to keep from falling off ledges. The ruby slippers of Dorothy of Oz couldn’t compare with the “golden slippers” Aldrin wore in space—foot restraints, resembling wooden Dutch shoes, that he could bolt to a work station in the Gemini equipment bay. One of his neatest tricks was to bring along portable handholds he could slap onto either the Gemini or the Agena to keep his body under control. A variety of space tools went into his pressure suit to go along with him once he exited the cabin. On November 11, 1966, the Gemini 12, the last of its breed, left earth and captured its Agena quarry. Then Buzz Aldrin, once and for all, banished the gremlins of spacewalking. He proved so much a master at it that he seemed more to be taking a leisurely stroll through space than attacking the problems that had frustrated, endangered, and maddened three previous astronauts and brought grave doubts to NASA leadership about the possible success of the manned lunar program. Aldrin moved down the nose of the Gemini to the Agena like a weightless swimmer, working his way almost effortlessly along a six-foot rail he had locked into place once he was outside. Next came looping the end of a hundred-foot line from the Agena to the Gemini for a later experiment, the job that had left Dick Gordon in a sweatbox of exhaustion. Aldrin didn’t show even a hint of heavy breathing, perspiration, or an increased heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice was crisp, sharp, clear. What he did seemed incredibly easy, but it was the direct result of his incisive study of the problems and the equipment he’d brought from earth. He also made sure to move in carefully timed periods, resting between major tasks, and keeping his physical exertion to a minimum. When he reached the workstation in the rear of the Gemini, he mounted his feet and secured his body to the ship with the waist tether. He hooked different equipment to the ship, dismounted other equipment, shifted them about, and reattached them. He used a unique “space wrench” to loosen and tighten bolts with effortless skill. He snipped wires, reconnected wires, and connected a series of tubes. Mission Control hung on every word exchanged between the two astronauts high above earth. “Buzz, how do those slippers work?” Aldrin’s enthusiastic voice came back like music. “They’re great. Great! I don’t have any trouble positioning my body at all.” And so it went, a monumental achievement right at the end of the Gemini program. Project planners had reached all the way to the last inch with one crucial problem still unsolved, and the man named Aldrin had whipped it in spectacular fashion on the final flight. Project Gemini was

The act of facilitating another person's learning was incredible. As I went from workstation to workstation, I felt as much as saw people's beautiful and individual souls as their respective light bulbs snapped on heralding the comprehension of a new bit of knowledge. Those light bulbs were all the same color. The shine of learning and accomplishment was a pure and universal element, one that happened to emanate from every possible skin tone, sexual preference and religious persuasion or lack thereof. From my weekend hedonism to my studies and everywhere in between, I was deliciously stunned to reveal one after another of the tell-tale and absolutely indisputable signs that within all human beings exists a core of common needs and hopes.

In the early 1980s, I took a fourteen-month sabbatical from Kleiner to lead the desktop division at Sun Microsystems. Suddenly I found myself in charge of hundreds of people. I was terrified. But Andy Grove’s system was my bastion in a storm, a source of clarity in every meeting I led. It empowered my executive team and rallied the whole operation. Yes, we made our share of mistakes. But we also achieved amazing things, including a new RISC microprocessor architecture, which secured Sun’s lead in the workstation market. That was my personal proof point for what I was bringing, all these years later, to Google.

the first microdot drive out for a second one and downloaded all the files again. It was shockingly easy and extremely anticlimactic. No alarms blared, no guards sprinted over to my workstation, and none of my coworkers so much as glanced in my direction. A relieved breath escaped my lips. Now on to the slightly

WHAT IS IT, exactly, that people are really afraid of when they say they don’t like change? There is the discomfort of being confused or the extra work or stress the change may require. For many people, changing course is also a sign of weakness, tantamount to admitting that you don’t know what you are doing. This strikes me as particularly bizarre—personally, I think the person who can’t change his or her mind is dangerous. Steve Jobs was known for changing his mind instantly in the light of new facts, and I don’t know anyone who thought he was weak. Managers often see change as a threat to their existing business model—and, of course, it is. In the course of my life, the computer industry has moved from mainframes to minicomputers to workstations to desktop computers and now to iPads. Each machine had a sales, marketing, and engineering organization built around it, and thus the shift from one to the next required radical changes to the organization. In Silicon Valley, I have seen the sales forces of many computer manufacturers fight to maintain the status quo, even as their resistance to change caused their market share to be gobbled up by rivals—a short-term view that sank many companies. One good example is Silicon Graphics, whose sales force was so accustomed to selling large, expensive machines that they fiercely resisted the transition to more economical models. Silicon Graphics still exists, but I rarely hear about them anymore.

A bus station is where the bus stops. A train station is where the train stops. On my desk, I have a workstation.” William Faulkner

did not want. She noticed that he was wearing suspenders and a dress shirt, and she asked him: “What’s on your calendar today?” “A board meeting. Nothing too taxing. You?” “I have to make sure war doesn’t break out in North Africa. Nothing too taxing.” He laughed, and for a moment she felt close to him again. Then he folded the newspaper and stood up. “I’d better put on my tie.” “Enjoy your board meeting.” He kissed her forehead. “Good luck with North Africa.” He went out. Pauline returned to the West Wing but instead of going to the Oval Office she made her way to the press office. A dozen or so people, mostly quite young, sat at workstations, reading or keying. There were television screens around the walls, all showing different news shows. Copies of the morning’s papers were scattered everywhere. Sandip Chakraborty had a desk in the middle of the room, which he preferred to a private office: he liked to be in the thick of things. He stood up as soon as Pauline entered. He was wearing his trademark suit-and-sneakers. “The trouble in Chad,” she said to him. “Has that story had any traction?” “Until a few minutes ago, no, Madam President

Have you ever been hungry, Gunslinger? I bet your royal ass you haven’t But I have been to dark places Ones you have no idea what they look like smell like taste like And by the forces above me I am not going back there Not even if I die My soul will be nourished somewhere

The Weight… …of the wait the stanza the monoclonal pocket-watch chain I dig deeper into the words I write Mistakes Vulnerabilities Insecurities overload They want me off the board I stand my ground I lose a nail or two I cling…click…blink and it’s all gone

But I’d give the art to any artless soul so that they exchange it For a pair of Gucci sunglasses and a cheque I could use it to ride in Disney Land or worship in front of the Siddhartha sleep in a Buddhist temple or scream my heart out with the wolves in a North Atlantic forest

I set my unfinished dagger carefully on my worktable, turned off my forge, and left my workstation. But even as I walked over to what I supposed we’d be calling the mess tent, my mind was on my dagger.

I push off my workstation, walk over to an annoyed Storee, and pull her into a tight embrace. And just for added measure, I kiss the top of her head. “Good luck, babe.” “Babe,” Tanya squeals. “Oh, I can’t take it.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “I need to tell Martha and Mae about this.” She hurries off, pulling her phone out of her pocket as she moves toward the back corner of the gym. Storee pushes away from me, a look of disgust on her face. “Babe?” “Thought it was a nice touch.” I smirk.

He returned, holding something in between his teeth. After hopping up on the table, he unceremoniously dropped it onto the workstation in front of me.  “This is it?” I asked, holding up a small silver ring, the purple amethyst sparkling in the light. The setting was gorgeous—the entire piece was, really.  He cleared his throat. “It was my mother’s. It’s the only thing I could think of. She gave it to me before she passed away.”  So he’d lost a parent, too. I knew firsthand how heartbreaking that was, and I wondered who had been by his side. Who’d helped him through the grief?