Here at PHD the motto work hard, play hard, rings true. The office is practically full by 7:55 am every morning, and you’ll always find folks grinding away well past the normal corporate quittin’ time. But Friday at 5pm? Well let’s get the BLL’s flowing! (Bud Light Lime – yes I am serious, yes this is the PHD beer of choice).
I recently went down to good ol’ New Orleans for Mardi Gras for a couple days of shenanigans. I have been there before during non-Mardi Gras time and it’s a great city with rich culture, zesty food, smooth music and good people. If you want to experience a lot of that, I suggest you go during a non Mardi Gras time period because Mardi Gras.. well that’s about one thing and one thing only: Drinkin in the Streets!
And, you meet a lot of “interesting” people in these streets
And even some half people
So yea if you want to experience the great culture the city has to offer, go any week besides Mardi Gras (or jazz fest – typically in April, not as crazy, but in the same ballpark).
One techy thing I noticed was the obsession with capturing moments on camera and sharing them immediately. I’ll preface this next part by saying I’m a huge offender. Check-in’s, pics, thoughts… they all need to go to Facebook & Twitter as fast as I think them. I recently flew to Atlanta to surprise a friend for his birthday, and it was quite difficult not to check-in at the airport, talk about what I was doing, etc. There was a few times I went for my phone, thankfully remembered I was surprising someone and stopped myself from posting. And once I realized I couldn’t post or share anything, I really didn’t know what to do with myself. It’s like that scene in the second Matrix, when Neo is fighting all the Agent Smiths, then just flies away.. all the Agent Smith’s just shrug and start to disband aimlessly. THAT’s how I felt not sharing and posting.
But observing this trend at Mardi Gras puts in perspective the almost nostalgic feeling of simply enjoying the moment. Being happy and fulfilled with what’s happening right in front of your eyes. The absence of the almost addicting twang to post/share is actually quite calming. The world will go on. Nothing will collapse if you don’t take a picture of this funny/crazy/gross thing and share it with your network.
But walking on Bourbon St, you’re bound to see crazy characters, and just as certain bound to see people around them, phones out, snapping pics, taking vid then sending that off to the world. I guess it’s not all bad. I love sharing what I’m doing at any given point, and of course I’m always trolling my wall to see what everyone else is doing. It can be fun! When I’m stuck at work on Monday, my friend is on a cruise in the Bahamas, posting pictures of paradise. And that can put things in perspective too. This is why we work. So we can enjoy life as much as we can. And then it gets me pumped for my next adventure, coming to an R.J. Payne Facebook Wall and @phillybobpayne Twitter Page near you.
I guess my message is; capturing memories and sharing them immediately with the world is a great benefit of today’s technological, never disconnected society. But don’t do it at the expense of the memory. There’s definitely been times when something’s happened in front of me, immediate gut reaction to go for my phone & capture this, then it’s either over as fast as it happened, or I miss most of it fumbling with my phone. So I made a decision down in NOLA. Every so often I’m going to make it a point to just experience something. Appreciate it for what it is.. right here, right now. No picture. No sharing. This is for my eyes only. Apologies in advance to my network, but hey – next time we catch up, we’ll have something to discuss that you didn’t read on Facebook 
Oh and as for the title here’s a hint: It’s because we’re not! Because we got PHD Virtual Backup which just works! Try it for free here! And check out this awesome video on CloudHook!