S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t?

Was it triggered by all our neighbors working remotely and their kids attending “zoom school”?

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

“5” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “The messiness of life is the best part. Maybe it won’t make the edit for social media, and that’s why the insider’s view is always the best. Intimacy is about knowing another person’s mess.” Virgo

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 30 of the Second Season’s My Pandemic Year’s Natural Experiment, on April 17th in the spring of 2020 here in California.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E29 — Three Months That Changed the World; S2 E28 — Hosting Norwegian Zooms While Trump Eliminated the Virus in April; S2 E27 — Why I Have to Keep Leo da V on a Leash and So Should You

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E29 — Day 29 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E28 — Day 28 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E27 — Day 27 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

Cox WiFi kept dropping — it’s been off more than it’s been on — so yesterday I worked on correcting bogus “Contacts” emails one-by-one via LinkedIn changing them in my “Friends of Steves” master spreadsheet.

- I still required online capabilities for copying and pasting them through the hot spot feature on my iPhone — as my sister showed Emma the Baroness and me when we last visited months ago in Michigan.
- Later in the evening I tested Internet access with Apple TV. Why did Amazon Prime work, but Netflix didn’t? Maybe it wasn’t WiFi in that case, but Netflix popularity and T-Mobile capacity? Netflix is free on T-Mobile as a perk for signing up.

Meanwhile I wasn’t looking forward to my next call with BC (which turned out fine as a Zoom video session) and, to be honest, my mild anxiety compounded my low-ebb feelings from the mind-numbing WiFi work arounds.

Sure, BC lashed out about his favorite local restaurant’s forced closing potentially for good.

He dropped by for lunch in the charming plaza in La Quinta where he moved from Newport Beach.

His move was longer go than I realized triggered by two events, his mother passed away and he had heart by-pass surgery.

“What happened? I don’t recognize my country,” he said.

His local La Quinta gym closed where he treated his ailing back in its jacuzzi and swam laps.

For as long as I knew him he competed in the Masters program at the University before his relocation to the exclusive California desert.

Once we got past our rants and reactions to coronavirus business closures, it only took a couple of minutes to find our conversational groove like old times.

Mostly through his love of rock and roll and former training in anthropology from Stanford and my wondering aloud if there was a half-life for wisdom.

He thanked me at the end of the call for realizing as an executive coach, why I had recruited him in the first place, he found an angle for approaching the local restaurant owner and offering business advice.

I should have thanked him for the boost in energy I felt from reestablishing a common ground in our personal and professional relationship.

Enough to slog though the excruciatingly slow process of listing emails of my 1840 LinkedIn 1st degree network in my “Contacts” once again.

But the boost dissipated as I realized it will take 4 or 5 weeks at 5 days a week just to complete my LinkedIn updates.

Ouch. Yawn.

So, somehow I need to schedule that without stopping Patreon postings and with adding consistent email messaging to Proteges, Mentors and Friends.

Yawn again.

Evidence

How about a Holiday Tau boost? Game. Set. Match.

“5” Steve Zahn, 51: “Visualizing alone can’t make things true, but it can motivate action that feels natural and familiar instead of labored and difficult. As you visualize the future, you lay its groundwork.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

I know this is Friday, so Steve is this a randy suggestion — your Holiday Tau — one I should whisper to Emma the Baroness tonight? Or are you hinting at something else entirely?

“4” Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You’ve been thinking about how to get what you want, and it’s clear you’ll need to make a special request. Timing is everything. It will be better to ask after nightfall or tomorrow.” Aries

So, Smithy I’ve tried several attempts to understand the gist of your Holiday Tau. I stood up, stared at the middle ground out my office window, walked to our front lawn, bent down and pulled a dozen weeds, came back to my office and reread it, but I can’t quite grog it. Sorry.

“2” Steve Smith, 30: “You are coming back to a part of yourself that has been long abroad. It’s not that you outgrew or rejected this aspect of you, but you have not been able to prioritize it. That will change.” Gemini

Aha. Funny this is your Holiday Tau, Howey. As I was walking, staring and weeding while contemplating Smithy’s TauBit of Wisdom I settled on the essence of your’s instead.

“5” Steve Howey, 42: “Life has its own set of navigational rules. To understand it, you have to look backward; to live it, you can only go forward. Also, you can only feel what it’s like to be inside it when you’re standing still.” Cancer

Wait guys. Is this all about the time I was out of work for almost a year? That stretch defined a long, very long learning curve about transferrable skills and understanding new careers operationally, but most importantly by learning new jargon for describing what I had accomplished in previous jobs — you know like how long it takes to learn a new language.

“5” Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “There was a time you didn’t believe that you could actually change your circumstances by merely observing them differently. Now you believe it, and you do it on a daily basis. Today brings proof.” Leo

Okay G&G your Holiday Tau can be taken two ways. The last part about knowing and enjoying another’s mess intimately is about our life long love affair — me and Emma the Baroness. The second could be about what I took away from a chapter in “Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives” about how Brian Eno lives his life like and art form developing several passion projects at the same time. If one doesn’t work out he jumps to another. Either way, it works.

Here’s how I’m relating to your Holiday Tau couch Kerr, I mean coach Kerr. I’m trying to squeeze about 1840 people into a room through that small Interned door when Cox WiFi keeps shutting it on and off all day.

“4” Steve Kerr, 54: “It’s like you’re trying to move a couch into a room with a small door. Once inside, everything will work out nicely. But getting through this tight squeeze will take some doing. What needs to be released in order to move forward?” Libra

Ha. Easy for your Holiday Tau to say. I realized it will take me four or five weeks of swimming trying to keep my head above water once I dive in to get it done!

“4” Steve Nash, 45: “Why return to projects that were not enormously successful the first time around? You’d rather move on, and move on you will, after a brief bit of business is handled. Dive in and get it done.” Aquarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

- @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines grew from 1594 to 1628.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

- “The Fifth Risk,” by Michael Lewis describes how the thinkers in federal departments were targeted by Trump’s administration, especially the scientists and researchers. “‘I was fucking nervous as shit, Bannon later told friends. I go, Holy fuck, this guy [Trump] doesn’t know anything. And he doesn’t give a shit.’ Even in normal times the people who take over the United States government can be surprisingly ignorant… The United States government might be the most complicated organization on the face of the earth. Its two million federal employees take orders from four thousand political appointees. How to stop a virus, how to take a census, how to determine if some foreign country is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon or if North Korean missiles can reach Kansas City: these are enduring technical problems.”
- “Chasing the Dime,” by Michael Connelly describes the inner workings of a (fictional) commercial research laboratory which fits the Paradoxy-Moron organization type. “(In the lab) is where you find time for more AE work. Analyze and evaluate. When the unknown or unexpected came up in the lab you stopped and went into AE mode. What do you see? What do you know? What does it mean? In the lab everything was clear … simple. Quantifiable. Scientific theory was tested and either proved or disproved. No gray areas. No shadows.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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