Two nice work office related new items hit recently about what people who at work when their not working.

The first one tries to estimate the cost of playing fantasy football during the work day. Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc came up with the number of US$435 million per week in labor is spent on people playing fantasy football while they should be working, or only US$275 million per week if they only spent 10 minutes a day thinking about it. Of course, they also point out that similar productivity is lost due to a host of activities, like smoking breaks and off-topic web surfing.

Another article on Wikipedia made the internet circuit on tracing back changes to entires to various companies and organizations. A lot of fuss has been made about people at Walmart and Congressional offices altering pages about themselves. However, I thought the more interesting findings were the people editing off-topic pages from work.

Someone from the CIA corrected lyrics used in a musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. There seems to be Democrat party employee who loves tennis, and keeps tabs on the soon to be retired Tim Henman page. But the best example has to be someone at the Minnesota Republican Party who replaced the entire Harry Potter entry with a one-liner spoiler of the last book.

The exact theme of this blog keeps on changing, and I’m getting tired of re-writing this page. The coverage tends to be broad, touching upon technology, design, policy, work / home life, travel, and even some leisure too. But, it seems to mostly be about networks, telecommunications, and their cultural effects but also about information, marketing, and popular culture.

I’ll be honest and say that it’s mostly about whatever is on my mind, even if it is off-topic. Oh yes, sorry in advance for the typos.

Enjoy.

- Ray Cha.
ray at weatherpattern dot com

Post Script: I also write for popgadget.net and flowtv.org. I used to post at ifbook, a blog hosted by the Institute for the Future of the Book.