Musings

Pavlovian Shopping Experience

2011-09-01T23:03:00.001-04:00

Aimee and I went to pick some stuff up from Wal-Mart last night. Ok, it was a lot of stuff. So much, in fact, that when we checked out I grabbed a second cart to put our groceries into. While I was waiting for Aimee’s turn in line, I sat on a bench at the end of the checkout. It wasn’t long before my eyes wandered to the piece of metal dangling from the bottom of the cart to the floor. “What could it be?”, I wondered.

When Aimee finally arrived at the checkout, she caught me fixated on the bottom of the cart. “Are you ok"?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just wondering why there’s a lightning rod on this cart”, I responded. It was just a hunch but it was also the only logical reason for the piece of metal. It just wasn’t clear to me what it was for.

Aimee clarified that for me. “Oh! What a great idea! I hate getting shocked by the cart!” That solved the mystery. Wal-Mart found a way to ground its carts, despite their rubber wheels. It really surprised me that any company would worry about something as minor as an occasional static shock to its customers. It made me wonder if they are concerned that shoppers are being conditioned to experience physical pain when they shop at a Wal-Mart.

A phone for the rest of us!

2011-07-20T13:40:00.003-04:00

John Doe,

This is certainly one of the more unusual requests that we've had in quite a while, but we appreciate your help in this regard. I'm going to go ahead and close this ticket.

Thanks!
Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: John Doe
To: Gary
Subject: Re: Supervisor Phone

I have no need for a supervisor phone. If my new phone could be red however with the words "Big Deal" on it, that would go a long way.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

----- Reply message -----
From: Gary
Subject: Supervisor Phone
To: Bill
Cc: John Doe

Bill,

I don't see why anyone has to have access to the supervisor phone, perhaps we should move it from John's office to the server room?

John Doe, I'm assuming this won't hurt your feelings? If necessary we can buy a second supervisor phone, but since we intend to substitute data for a supervisor anyway, seems like a waste.

Gary

Cinderella trying to go to the ball

2011-07-10T14:16:00.001-04:00

Navigator

2011-06-19T20:39:00.001-04:00

Parenting By Hockey

2011-04-13T14:43:00.000-04:00

Everything that I believe to be a cornerstone of good parenting can be found in a well-officiated hockey game. If you have ever watched a game, you have surely borne witness to the tantrum thrown by many players on their way to the penalty box as they plead their case. You have also likely noticed that an official never says “well, you’re making me feel so bad, I’m gonna change my mind”. Nope. It is quite possible that the official will be more watchful of the play upon which the penalized player is blaming her folly, however officials never apologize for enforcing good conduct.

Officials stick together. When a linesman makes an offside call, players may attempt to argue the call with another official. They may earnestly plead their case that the call was wrong; perhaps they believe that the linesman doesn’t like them. I’ve never witnessed an official changing the call of another official, except on plays which are open to review (see below). No official has ever said “Yeah, I know, ole’ Joe really needs to get some glasses. You know what, let’s just go ahead and give you a penalty shot.”

The rules are allowed to change in hockey. Not over-night, not in the middle of games, but the rules do evolve. Different officials enforce the rules slightly differently. Amazingly enough, most players are able to adapt without too much trouble. Sure, there’s the occasional idiot that still doesn’t understand why he’s not supposed to elbow other players in the head. Most of today’s players have managed to get this change of acceptable behavior incorporated into their playing style. With reasonable notice, rules can change.

Reviewing the play. While most plays don’t get a review, some plays do. One of the great things about hockey is that an official can review the play and change his mind about the call. They actually say “Yeah, I thought there was a kicking motion too. As it turns out, there wasn’t and the goal is going to stand.” Officials can and do admit to being wrong. No hard feelings.

We use a penalty box, figuratively speaking. We don’t start the timer until our player has stopped futilely pleading her case. She sometimes argues that the linesman was wrong. Sometimes she is right. If it’s warranted, we’ll review the play and discuss the results after she has served her penalty. The officials never change each others’ calls. The call stands: even when there isn’t unanimity amongst the officials, there is a united front from the player’s perspective. If absolutely necessary, the officials confer between periods-but never within earshot of the player. Finally, the officials never forget that the player wants only to win the game. It is the job of the officials to make sure that the game was won in accordance with the rules.

Two Packs A Day

2011-04-07T15:44:00.000-04:00

Aimee and I quit smoking (for the last time) about 9 years ago. Like many other reformed smokers, we sometimes smugly wonder how some people can tolerate a habit which easily costs them $150 per month. That money could be spent on so many better things.

Today, I realized how incredibly funny we are. Even though we don’t smoke, we’ve hardly put that extra (combined) $300 per month to good use. Really, we just developed a different but equally (or more) expensive habit. Coffee.

The weight of realization hit me today when I purchased my 16oz Saturday morning latte with an extra shot. After tip the total came to $4.98. Aimee and I each purchase three or four coffees per week.

I wondered why we haven’t purchased an espresso machine. We’d save money the first month. It isn’t as though we’re saving time driving the wrong direction to the coffee shop, waiting in line to order and pay, and then waiting in line for our coffee. If anything, that’s a net loss too. What other reasons would we have for continuing to frequent the local coffee shop? The only thing I can come up with is that we don’t want the responsibility of trying to service ourselves. We’re too specific and nitpicky about our orders. There’s too much of a chance we’d screw up our own orders, and then we’d have to start our days feeling inadequate. Perhaps we’ll leave coffee making to the professionals.

Conflicted

2011-04-04T19:34:00.001-04:00

We were driving back to the cottage from Country Dairy today when we happened upon a truck moving slowly down the road. It looked as though the driver had a load of metal to recycle, and he was moving cautiously. As we waited for a safe opportunity to pass, I noticed a "Tapout" sticker in his back window. In the event that you have no idea what Tapout is all about, just think about the guys you see pummeling each other on national television from time to time. Someone has to make gear and sponsored clothing for these guys to wear while they attempt to inflict closed head injuries upon each other. That's what Tapout does.

When we were able to safely pass the truck we did so, waving casually as we eased by. Once we were safely around him, I glanced in my rear-view mirror and noticed the truck's vanity plate. It read "Jesus".

I had forgotten that Jesus was sponsored by Tapout.

We already worked it out!

2011-04-03T22:22:00.002-04:00

We decided it would be nice to get out of town for a couple of days, so we asked Mom if we could go to the lake house. She said sure, and here we are. Last summer Mom had a sign made that reads "Evy's Lake House". The sign is mounted prominently in front of the cottage.

Evelyn has decided that it means that the lake house is literally hers.This evening we were brushing her teeth when I said something about "Grandma's Lake House". Evelyn retorted "It's MY lake house." I suggested to her that perhaps she should work that out with Grandma as I walked out of the bathroom.

From around the corner came a defiant, impatient voice that declared "We already worked it out!"

Disciples of the Free Market

2011-03-30T14:17:00.001-04:00

We’ve all heard of the wonders of a free market. It regulates prices, produces superior products, and protects consumers from lousy products. In theory, I’m in agreement. In practice, I’m going to point something out using Michael Porter’s five forces.

Let’s consider an example. Restaurants in Eaton Rapids where you can sit down, eat, and get a beer or glass of wine with dinner. There is the English Inn north of town, however it’s very expensive and Evelyn isn’t quite ready to go there. We’ve got Abie’s, which is completely inappropriate for Evelyn. Then there’s Darb’s. That’s effectively the only local choice. This week we went in and sat for 20 minutes before anyone came to our table. Awesome. They are always full, even though their service frequently leaves something to be desired. They are conveniently located. They are also the only “family” restaurant left in town. As a result, there are few substitutes. It took Darb’s five years to turn a profit when they came to town, which is part of the reason that there aren’t more restaurants. They have to lose money for five years first. That locks out new entrants. There is very low rivalry. In this case, the bargaining power of customers is almost non-existent. We will probably continue to reward their poor service because we’re too lazy to drive to Lansing or Mason.

A second example is the Internet company we use at the office. They are reasonably reliable and offer co-location services that we use. Once again, their sales and service are terrible. We pay them $1100 per month for services, and their salesman returns my calls after three days. At that point, I’ll ask my question. He typically returns an answer after two weeks or so, once I’ve left him a half-dozen voicemails. More often than not, he answers a question completely unrelated to what I want to know.

In the past, they tried selling us a fiber-optic connection to their office. The value wasn’t quite right for us then, but we’re about to buy a new phone system. If we roll our phone, Internet, and co-location traffic onto the same piece of fiber, we may be in a position to get higher service levels at a lower cost. The only problem is that if we do that, I’m going to have to deal with our sales representative more. I refuse to encourage this company’s insistence on making us use a sales representative who is probably too overwhelmed to handle his territory.

Much like the restaurant situation, there are very few vendors in Lansing that can provide the array of services that our current vendor can provide. Barriers to entry are high. Switching costs are tremendous. There must be tremendous economies of scale in order for a competitor to make an entry into this market. In other words, the only companies which are likely to enter the market are ginormous, just the kind of companies that aren’t well known for their superior service.

Perhaps competition regulated markets in the past, but will it in the future? It seems likely to me that specialization, economies of scale, and available funding will regulate the markets of the future much more than customers will.

Karma

2011-03-26T13:46:00.001-04:00

I’ve done an awful lot to damage my karma. As a teenager, I was incredibly anti-social. As a matter of fact, I reviled in all things obnoxious. As an adult, I’ve tried to make up for my teenage years. I volunteer at Big Brothers\Big Sisters. I make a point of trying to be an understanding father, husband, and coworker. Sometimes it seems as though I’m making some karmic progress. Then there are other days.

This was a really long week. I came home sick on Monday afternoon. Aimee’s aunt passed away Wednesday morning. Friday we discovered a problem with a summary table that a consultant built for us at the office, and earlier today (Saturday) the firewall decided to stop working. Aimee is very, very sick today.

So, at 1:30 in the afternoon, when Aimee was finally able to rest, I sat down to work on the pile of schoolwork that I needed to get done. Just as I was easing into my chair I heard an all-too-familiar sound behind me. Perhaps the cat was identifying with Aimee; sharing her pain. Maybe the cat is evil. Perhaps my karma is getting back in touch with me.

As the cat started to settle in for a nap on Aimee’s office chair, she decided that it would be a good idea to lean over the side of the chair and vomit all over the floor. She’s a really big cat, and she can eat a lot of food. This was thoroughly evidenced by the magnitude of the mess she made all over the floor. She looked proudly down at her work, vurped a couple of times, and then nestled in and promptly fell asleep.

Compromise

2011-01-18T22:47:00.001-05:00

Most of us are forced to compromise at one point or another, because that's the the expectation of our society. Compromise is, however, the worst form of conflict resolution because everyone loses something. Instead of arguing through the differences and devising a rock solid solution, each party gives up their claim to perfection. It ensures sub optimality.

Little Again

2010-12-19T22:56:00.001-05:00

“How did this end up behind the toilet?” Aimee asked, holding a splintered piece of wood up for me to see. She did not ask what the piece of wood was, because she already knew what it was. Her only query was in regard to the catastrophic event which ended with the wood in such an unusual place. At this point, my ruse had unraveled.

I learned a lot this week. Check all your servos before attempting a flight. If it looks like a part is missing, it probably is. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve had an Esky Lama V4 helicopter for quite a while, and I’m reasonably good at flying it. I also have an Esky Belt CP V2 which I am terrified of. My classification method for model helicopters is to base their class on the cost of a crash. A Lama 4 is a $20 crash helicopter. The Belt CP V2 is a $50 crash helicopter. In spite of numerous attempts at flying the Belt CP, I have never gotten it to so much as hover without a spectacular crash ensuing.

Despite my terror, the helicopter was a graduation gift from my brother and sister-in-law, and it would be an insult to them for me not to master it. Keeping that in mind, I spent hours this week learning how to maintain blade pitch, align the flybar, fine tune the gyro, and make the best use of the remote control.

As it turns out, our new house has a wonderful heli-pad and workshop. We call it “the pool table”. For the Lama, it’s perfect. For the Belt CP, it’s probably best not to use the pool table for a heli pad. During my many tuning attempts, though, I needed to spin it up to check things out, and the table worked great. Aimee crabbed pretty regularly when I did this with the larger helicopter because it’s, well, huge. It’s got a 22” span on the rotor. I assured her that she need not worry.

This morning in the shower I had an “Aha!” moment. Rather than running the motor at low speed with lots of blade pitch, maximum stability could be best achieved by running the motor at a very high speed with a very small amount of pitch. This would create a gyroscopic stabilizer effect, like a spinning bike wheel. As soon as Aimee left for the store, I put my plan into action.

I set the pitch on the remote to 0 and spooled the motor up to about 50%. That doesn’t sound like much, but the main rotor blades were moving plenty fast. The torsion was tremendous, and the helicopter tried spinning in circles. This should have warned me that something was very wrong. Instead of turning the model off to consider why it was turning so much, I decided instead to find out if I finally had the pitch right on the rotor. I grabbed the tail to stop the helicopter from spinning and turned up the speed just a hair. It started taking off in earnest, which would be a bad thing in the house, so I tried to shut it down. In my panic, though, I pushed the throttle the wrong way and instead set it to full! Within a fraction of a second my arm twisted up over my head and the helicopter self-destructed into the ceiling, demolishing a hanging light in the process.

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”

Aimee was right, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. I cleaned up the mess as best I could, just like any kid would do after destroying something while Mom is out of the house. It was only after I began taking a broken parts inventory that I noticed two things. 1) The helicopter is missing a part, and has been since the day it arrived. In fact, I had often wondered why the post coming out of the swash plate didn’t seem to attach to anything. 2) The tail servo is dead, which explains why the confounded machine was so intent on spinning in circles. Had I looked into both of these problems earlier, I probably wouldn’t have had to tell my wife how a shredded rotor blade came to rest behind the toilet in a bathroom fifteen feet from our pool table. Yes, I learned a lot this week.

Enough?

2010-12-15T23:15:00.001-05:00

Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!

As it turns out, this is also good advice when dealing with contractors: "Will you need more outlets in your garage?"

"Yes!"

"Do you expect to use more than 15 amps between your kitchen and garage?"

"YES!"

"Do you need more than 15 amps just for your garage?"

"YES!"

You can stop saying yes when they stop asking questions. Otherwise, just rinse and repeat. Else you might find yourself in the un-enviable position of trying to run a mill, its stepper motors, control PC, a small space heater, garage door opener, air compressor, and kitchen all at the same time on a 15 amp circuit. You can image how well that ended!

When I opened the panel and saw the 15 amp breaker, I was once again tempted to track down the scurvy rat that built our house so I could throttle him. He's a contractor though, which means he'd probably take me. A shame.

Location:S Walnut St,Lansing,United States

Prayer

2010-10-29T14:15:00.003-04:00

Evelyn has been having trouble sleeping in her bed all night lately. Recently she brought a story home from church about how God watches over sleeping children. We read it to her in hopes that it would help her sleep better. Every night since, she's asked us to come and pray for her after we read our bedtime books.

Last night was precious. Aimee said a short prayer which ended with "and please watch over Evelyn while she sleeps", to which Evelyn added "and God, if you aren't in my room, I can go sleep on the mat in Mom and Dad's room".

My Happy Place

2010-10-14T13:06:00.001-04:00

We’re very nearly done with the renovations at our new place. The last two days I’ve spent some time working from home, and it’s been wonderful. At our old house, the best view available showed us an outstanding view of the, um, neighbor’s house.

While we get the downstairs finished, I’ve had my desk upstairs next to the TV. The picture below is what I have been looking at out my window. You can’t see it in the picture, but fall leaves are slowly drifting by on the river. It’s a lot easier to get in the zone from here than it is at the office, staring at a blank wall and trying to be productive between interruptions.

Bad Peppers

2010-09-08T20:31:00.001-04:00

I’ve got really bad allergies. Anyone who knows me knows this. Usually my affliction means that my nose runs at inopportune moments. What’s worse than a runny nose? One that should be running but won’t. Why is this bad? Because it means you can’t breathe, and it eventually leads to a sinus infection.

There are a lot of great ways to deal with congestion. Decongestants, for example. What if those don’t help? Well, exercise helps. What if you’re really lazy, or otherwise occupied? Well…then I heartily recommend spicy food.

In my quest for natural decongestants, I’ve tried many different spicy foods. I consider myself a connoisseur of strongly opined cuisine. We were dining out the other evening when I realized that we had habanero butter at the table. I asked the waitress if they made it in the kitchen. When she said “yes”, I asked for diced habaneros with dinner. They were good, although somewhat disappointing.

A couple of days later, Aimee brought a pair of habaneros home from the grocery store. Based on my previous experience, I diced them up and dropped them into my taco dinner. No big surprises. They were spicy, flavorful, but not overpowering. Perhaps they were a bit disappointing as wicked peppers go.

My experience this evening led me to believe that 1) our local restaurant buys their habaneros from our local grocery store and 2) our local grocery store got a batch of bad peppers.

This evening I asked, once again, for diced habaneros with dinner. This time, however, the hotness was excruciating. Although my nose is no longer stuffed up, I can also not feel the roof of my mouth. After careful examination in the mirror, I’m quite certain that I still have a tongue…even though I’m unable to move it. In complete seriousness, my eyes started running down my cheeks because the food was so incredibly hot. For the first time in our eleven year relationship, Aimee finished dinner before I did. When the waitress came to ask Aimee if she wanted more water, I choked out an emphatic “yess!”

Things That Fly

2010-09-06T21:06:00.001-04:00

I have always loved things that fly. They are magical, defiant. The other day, Evelyn asked if she could fly my model airplane. Unfortunately, I don’t even know how to fly my model airplane. I assured her that we could do one better. We would build a rocket and fly that instead.

Building and flying a model rocket is the ultimate participative building activity that a parent can do with their child. I was excited to share the wonder of flying a rocket with Evelyn. After we selected our rocket, we sat down to assemble it together. Evelyn did a great job holding parts on, even though she didn’t want to get glue on her fingers.

Early this morning she was already eager to fly the rocket, but we both had plans already. It was evening before we both made it home again. Aimee called to warn me that Evelyn was set on flying her rocket and would not be deterred. We packed up the car and headed to the local soccer field.

Surprisingly, our rocket is the best one that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps it’s the awesome color. Maybe it’s because Evelyn wore a matching dress. Even though she wasn’t too keen on the noise, she managed to help fly the rocket three times in a row. For the record, I don’t think I have ever had a rocket fly three times. Certainly never on the same day!

What I.T. Does

2010-09-03T00:32:00.001-04:00

It's really easy to focus on the nuts and bolts of what I.T. does and completely disregard its role as a way of codifying institutional knowledge. We recently had an issue at the office with a check run. There are a lot of reasons why this particular event took place, but what's daunting is the expense of fixing it. In less than ten minutes, we created a problem which will cost several thousands of dollars to fix.

We like to automate processes in our I.T. department. Part of the reason is that we don't like doing mundane things over and over. The reason is that we invariably fail. In this case, we can try to absolve ourselves of guilt by pointing out that someone else didn't follow procedure. The problem, though, is that we routinely automate things because we hate trying to follow strict procedures. We aren't good at it.

There is a disconnect here. Technology is really good at doing things fast, and precisely. It also, however, helps us codify business rules. "When do we run check cycles?" Check the job scheduler.

"How do we run check cycles?" Read the comments in the code you found in the job scheduler. The bonus is that the rule is now written down. Codified. The employee who had the responsibility for remembering to write this code is now free to do other things. The person who used to run the job is off the hook for remembering teh very specific rules for running the job. Everybody wins.

Alien Life Exists on Earth

2010-09-03T00:23:00.001-04:00

I've got conclusive proof. They live on my block. For $14,000 in cash (while the $8000 tax credit was available. Do the math.). You can imagine the shape the house was in at that price. I knew we were in for a wild ride when they didn't bother with major renovations (I mean installing walls) before they moved in.

Part of the reason I'm sure they are aliens is that they are immune to the sounds and behaviors that any human simply cannot tolerate. First example, I can routinely hear their children yelling in a way reminiscent of horror movies. Through two sets of closed windows. And it's not because the parents are beating them; that's how they play.

Second evidence is their dog. Which barks all day and all night, indoors and out. Any red-blooded human would have disappeared this dog weeks ago. Every time we go over to complain about the dog, it mysteriously ends up inside through the back door despite a notable lack of humanoid presence at the front door. Question: How can their super-sensitive alien hearing detect that we're coming over, when they are deluged with noise non-stop?

I can't really figure them out. They seem nice enough, but I have a really difficult time reconciling their overt niceness with their incongruous, complete disregard for people living nearby. Maybe I should chalk this up to punishment for all the nights we partied loudly until the wee hours when the previous neighbors had a house full of young children.

That's probably fair.

Stuff That Just Works

2010-07-20T21:29:00.000-04:00

When I travel between home and office now, I'm a lot more likely to take my iPad than a computer. Once I'm at the office, I generally rely on my laptop instead. It's an issue of convenience. When I'm out of the office, iPad is much lighter, and I can connect to my office pc remotely and enjoy "wire speed" access from it while it sits on the office network.

There are some things that an iPad isn't very good at, but for the most part it works pretty well. What surprises me is that despite Apple having been the first vendor to market with a viable tablet computer, there are still folks who try to berate the iPad as an overgrown smart phone. It may be, however that's part of the genius. By basing the device on the iPhone, the app store and the iTunes model came with it. The software for these devices runs much better on a custom phone OS than it would with, say, Windows 7.

Since its release, the iPad has generated over two billion dollars in revenue in a virtually uncharted market space. It's closest, most likely rival isn't due to arrive on the scene in the United States until November. By then, Notion Ink's Adam will have a very difficult time catching up.

Paradigm Shift

2010-06-24T23:04:00.000-04:00

A lot of discussion has been given to the topic of what the iPad's role is. It is neither a phone, nor a laptop. Is it a device for which there is no place? Having owned an iPad for about two months, I'm of the opinion that the iPad is something new, unique, and paradigm changing. The interface is intuitive and fluid in a way that I have not experienced on my Android phone, nor any of my windows PCs.

HP Multi-touch all-in-one computers have promise but appear unable to deliver results. The machines come with large (22"+) multi-touch capable screens with all the computer hardware built directly into the monitor. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 OS integration is clunky and relies on the mouse driven paradigm. Take for example pinch-zooming. On either an Android device or an iPad, you can pinch to zoom in nearly any application. In most apps you can turn pages by swiping them to the side. Windows was never built for this kind of intuitive interface, so even the paint program I tried at Best Buy today failed to take advantage of the spacious multi-touch monitor on the computer.

The iPad, on the other hand, was built from the ground up with a touch interface in mind. This allows it to use gestures with consistency throughout the entire interface. Just as the mouse changed the way we think about interfaces, I'm convinced that the iPad will do something similar.

One of the complaints often voiced about the iPad is that it is a device with no apparent market space. That was true, however 3 million sales later, it appears that perhaps many of us were only begrudgingly staying in the laptop space anyway. As we prepare to head to the cottage this weekend, I wonder if there really is any reason to take my laptop to study. There is, of course. It's nostalgia.

BP, I don’t understand

2010-05-30T11:23:00.001-04:00

Now that BP’s most recent attempt to stop the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has failed, they have decided to revert to a revised version of their doomed “top hat” idea from several weeks ago. They indicate that the “top hat” will be ready in four to seven days.

I don’t understand. BP is facing tremendous cost every day that the spill continues. They started trying the current technique four days ago, and for weeks they must have been trying to figure out which trick is really going to work. Given that the cost of readying multiple techniques at once pales when compared to the cost of the spill, wouldn’t it have made sense for BP to start working on the “top hat” weeks ago? For part of this project, they need to cut the riser pipe, which I’m sure will take time. Once again, though, couldn’t they have started trimming the pipe weeks ago?

Momentous

2010-05-01T17:54:00.001-04:00

Be all you can be

2010-04-22T00:55:00.001-04:00

There used to be this advertisement the Armed Forces. I think it was the Army. It went something like be all you can be. I think about that a lot. To me being all that I can be is not so much about raw achievement as it was in the advertisement as much as being as human as I can be. It's about humanity.

Being good at a lot of things is pretty easy. For example riding a bike or walking or even running are all pretty easy skills to learn. Even more complicated skills are relatively easy to learn. Things like mathematics or accounting. Sure, it's a lot of work but they're still easy to learn.

I'm not sure why I struggle with humanity.Perhaps learning humanity is a struggle because it's a personally challenging endeavor. In learning most skills we build ourselves up. In learning humanity we have to understand that we aren't great at what we do. We must stop and reflect on the fact that we might be bad people in some regards. Each of us has probably done a bad thing from time to time. It's personally challenging to believe that we don't need to be competitive. It's okay not to be the best at something. It's okay if somebody else has great ideas and does great things.

Conventional wisdom is similar to the Army commercial that I mentioned earlier. We believe that in order to be all we can be we must push ourselves to accomplish as much as we possibly can. Being good people is a challenge because in some regards it requires unlearning so many of those things that we spend so much time learning throughout our entire lives. Sometimes being a good person means letting someone else come in first place.

For Sale…

2010-03-11T22:43:00.001-05:00

I came across this on a trip to the grocery store the other day.

Does the author realize that if Sarge’s testicles were removed instead of his ovaries, he might stop peeing in the house the other 20% of the time?

A champion’s offspring with no papers? Really! What on earth did the papers get used for, “medicinal purposes”? Is he part Min-Pin, part Maui Wowy? Perhaps they only had enough newspaper to potty train him for 11 months and they were forced to use his pedigree when they ran out?

If you give a moose a muffin…

2010-02-26T00:57:00.001-05:00

By the time we got to Lansing this evening, Aimee was barely able to contain herself. Finally, she blurted out “If they offer you a Citi card, are you gonna take that too?”

Citi is one of my least favorite companies. Let me tell you, I can hold a grudge against a company for a long, long time. For the past fourteen years I have gone out of my way to avoid Quality Dairy. In fact, I bet that I have only visited a Quality Dairy store an average of once per year for the past fourteen years.

Anyway, the source of my wife’s mirth began a couple months ago when I was smitten with Bluetooth. First it was Bluetooth headphones, then mice, then an adapter for our home stereo system, and of course I eventually bought a used Bluetooth keyboard on E-bay. $25 shipped. It’s really slick, but once I tried it, I wanted to push the envelope.

Couchtop computing. Sure, it’s much hyped (ever heard of a media center PC?) but is anyone really into it? I tried it out, but I couldn’t see my monitor well enough to actually do anything. That got my wheels turning. I needed a larger monitor. Something large enough that I could sit on the couch and compose Word documents in comfort.

While I was simmering on this idea, the Olympic games began. I’m not into the Olympics, but I am into hockey. The game last Sunday was not to be missed: The USA versus Canada. The two super powers of hockey duking it out. In my ignorance I thought I could probably pay someone on the Internet to let me watch the game on my computer.

I was wrong. NBC kept redirecting me to Comcast. Finally, I realized that if I wanted to ever see hockey on TV again, I’d have to bite the bullet and upgrade our analog cable. It was such a frustrating realization that I nearly threw my computer. Instead, I called Comcast and sullenly ordered the entry level digital package.

If you give a moose a muffin, he’ll want some jam to go with it.

My logic went like this. If I ordered the cable upgrade quickly, I could still watch the final game on TV without getting smoked out at a bar. If I was going to swallow my pride and buy cable TV, I might as well watch the game on a reasonably good TV. If I was going to buy a reasonably good TV, it better be one that I could compose Word documents on while lying down on my couch.

Citi is one of my least favorite companies. It’s right up there with Dodge. And, ironically, Comcast. By the way, I don’t care for television (hockey games excepted) either. But there we were, driving a borrowed Dodge to purchase a super-size me television in time for a Comcast installation.

In case you’re wondering, they did not offer a discount if I put the purchase on a Citi credit card.

Pick-up sticks

2010-01-27T22:04:00.001-05:00

Cleaning up a tangled mess is probably not uncommon. Partially collapsed buildings must be carefully deconstructed in order to avoid damage to their neighbors. Failing companies are routinely broken down and sold in as profitable a fashion as possible.

Maintaining the status quo in terms of performance while making corporate changes can be difficult. It’s easy to overlook the value of unwritten knowledge. Even if processes are properly documented it can be difficult to understand the relationships between processes without having experienced them first hand.

Many service workers are unable to fully document what they do because much of they do is dictated by intuition. While recently reviewing a process which was performed by another employee in the past, I puzzled over why her results were so different from my own. Why did customers seem so responsive in the past, yet so lackluster today?

The answer is simple, straightforward. Her experience indicated that unless she prodded customers, customer response would be low. Her process included an unwritten step during which she would contact customers who did not respond in a timely fashion and offer to help them along in the process.

Another situation recently occurred which came from a similar cause: a missing, non-intuitive piece of information which made the difference between a successful project and a disastrous one. What is the role of this intuited knowledge in an evolving company? How can companies avoid faltering amidst the redevelopment of internal processes?

When employees will not or cannot become parties to process improvement, they may become liabilities; their mere presence will increase the cost of doing business. Replacing them will also certainly cause a temporary increase in the cost of doing business, and will create a short term lack of corporate improvement as corporate knowledge is reacquired through accelerated experience.

Improvement is cumulative. Without a solid foundation, future improvement is jeopardized. Broken processes were almost certainly created in shortsighted haste, and avoiding the same mistake in the future can only take place by refusing to take the easy way out.

2010 in Photos

2010-01-02T12:53:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I came across an article on LifeHacker that suggested creating a project for 2010. One of the suggestions was "365 Days of Photos". Normally I might think "Argh. Too much work!"

Is it really too much work? No, I'm just lazy. After a bit of thought, I realized that since my new phone can take reasonably good pictures AND it can upload directly to Flickr, there isn't a good excuse not to give this project a shot. The only missing piece of the puzzle was that I really dislike the idea of "double entry". Thanks to Flickr's embedded album and Blogger's feed reader plugin, the entire operation is completely seamless.

Each day I need only snap a photo on my phone, write a caption, and you can find it right here from my blog page! Just take a look at the right side of the screen for a slideshow, or click on the links under the slideshow.

Falling Short

2009-12-21T00:04:00.001-05:00

I recently took the plunge and purchased a “smart phone”. My particular model is an HTC Droid Eris. For the record, it’s cooler than cool. At a cost of $500 without a contract, the phone is still well worth the expense. I’ve been enlightened.

One of the things which I’ve found incredibly cool about my phone is the Pandora Internet radio application. The cost is minimal, and it streams radio directly to your phone. It’s great. Part of the reason it’s so cool, though, is that you can purchase Bluetooth headphones. Unlike the cliché wireless headsets, the headphones look good and they service both ears. They connect wirelessly to my phone, and allow me to listen to music with no cords attached. After a few minutes with the headphones, I was compelled to recant my dislike of Bluetooth technology.

My problem with Bluetooth has been largely in the failure of general Bluetooth adoption. Bluetooth devices are (headsets aside) still rare in terms of consumer adoption. After my revealing phone experience, I had to have Bluetooth on my laptop as well.

An E-Bay Bluetooth dongle cost me a whopping $5 plus shipping. It’s USB and sticks out of my computer only a very small amount. When it arrived, I eagerly plugged it in and powered up my headphones. The ensuing antics reminded me of why Microsoft completely failed with Windows Vista.

Vista on my home laptop works well. I don’t have any major complaints, however I was infuriated to find that Microsoft removed the level of Bluetooth support from Vista that’s available on my phone. Vista cannot recognize an a high quality audio device, and it cannot even use a simple HID device (as in…mouse). But my phone can. Go Google!

It quickly became clear that in order to use my Bluetooth device with my laptop, I would need to purchase a third party Bluetooth stack. At this rate, I thought “Well, they probably did Windows 7 right…maybe I’ll upgrade”.

Windows 7, Microsoft’s new flagship OS cannot use an elegant, mature technology like Bluetooth any better than my phone. Buying a third party stack (Bluesoleil’s stack) cost me an additional $30. If Microsoft had decided to properly equip Windows 7 to meet the demands of it’s consumers, I would have purchased that instead. Unfortunately, despite the catastrophic losses Microsoft took on Windows Vista, it has made an active decision to make the exact same mistake again. Nice work Microsoft! The good news is that at least this time, they have more practice when they execute the marketing blitz to convince people that they want an operating system which has been specifically built not to meet their needs.

The silver lining is that it sounds as though Google is building a PC operating system. If it’s anything like my phone, I’m confident that it will become the operating system that Microsoft failed to deliver not once, but twice.

Phone power

2009-12-17T08:59:00.002-05:00

I've been eating a lot of terrible food lately, and exercising very little. It is really starting to show, so I recently got the bright idea to enlist the help of my phone for tracking my nutrition.

Google market has lots of applications for people who want to track their calorie intake. I found one simply titled 'Calorie Counter'. While poking around the program, I noticed an option called 'barcode scanner'. It does just what it says. Point your phone camera at a food product barcode and the phone will identify the product in its database.

Phones have come a long way!

Some Well Deserved Rest

2009-12-06T19:15:00.001-05:00

On Friday afternoon, I commented to a coworker “I think I’ll try to spend some time in the basement this weekend.” That’s where my workshop is, and for some reason it’s relaxing just to hang out in the basement and put things in order.

Today I decided to get off my duff and install the new shocks I bought for Aimee’s car. They’re air shocks, so I had to drill some holes. After drilling the holes, I went to retrieve some tools from the basement.

The floor was wet. Our basement hasn’t been wet since we had a B-Dry system installed, and that’s been three years! My first suspicion was a leaking furnace humidifier, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. As I rooted around a bit, I finally noticed water coming out of the water heater…except that it was coming from places where is wasn’t supposed to be coming from!

So, it turns out that I really did spend time in the basement today. A lot of time. More than I could ever have expected! The really annoying part is that I probably aided the failure of our old water heater. We recently installed a water softener, and despite advice to install an expansion tank, I did not. Plumbing never turns out well, and there had previously been a softener installed without a tank. I was really afraid of upsetting our delicately balanced, non-leaking plumbing.

Today, of course, I finally picked up a tank when I bought the heater.

It cost $40 and installed with a saddle valve that pierced the copper line. If I had simply taken a few minutes to read about the expansion tank, I would have known that the installation was brain-dead simple, and I might have prolonged the life of our heater.

Of course, then I probably wouldn’t have spent time in my workshop today either.

Ghouls Beware

2009-10-25T20:55:00.001-04:00

We’ve had a lot of evil spirits rooting about our neighborhood lately. Frankly, it was simply becoming annoying. We tried calling professionals first, but nobody was answering at Ghost Busters. They probably get a lot of crank calls this time of year. Can’t say I blame them for not answering.

Finally, we realized that we needed to take matters into our own hands. The only option left was to carve up some very scary pumpkins, put on our scariest duds, and save our corner of town from certain destruction and even lower property value.

Pictures of our assault follow. Brace yourself though…they’re graphic!

Progressive

2009-10-24T21:12:00.001-04:00

The other day Aimee reported that a deer had sauntered across the road in front of her. In Lansing. Crossing Michigan Avenue. At first, I thought “Those dumb deer”. After some longer reflection I amended myself.

A car outside the city is usually travelling between 55 and 80 miles per hour. A car on Michigan avenue doesn’t travel any faster than 40, and has a lot more time to see a deer ambling across the road. The kicker? You can’t discharge firearms inside the city.

Dumb deer? I’ve decided that deer is pretty smart. Progressive, in fact! I suppose it can saunter wherever it pleases!

Warning Signs

2009-10-24T21:06:00.001-04:00

Three of us are travelling to Chicago in two weeks for a concert. Stu and I got together today to find a hotel and finalize our plans. We decided to take a train from Battle Creek, which is a bit pricey…but it gets us completely out of navigating Chicago traffic.

After getting train tickets, we started searching around the venue for hotels. The venue is The Riviera. When we first purchased the tickets I did a Google search around the venue with limited success. A street level view of the venue didn’t reveal much of anything. There were a lot of well maintained, but otherwise inconspicuous buildings. No hotel signs to be found.

Travelocity didn’t show any hotels closer than 1.5 miles from the venue, and obviously we have no intention of walking that distance through downtown Chicago in the middle of the night. We tried Expedia and Orbitz too. No joy. Finally, I resigned myself to doing a Google hotel search around the venue. One of the hits was on the same block. Chaching!

We did some searching for reviews on the hotel, but didn’t find much. Finally we decided to take a chance, call the place, and get a reservation. I dialed the phone, and a nice enough gentleman answered. When I enquired about the distance to the venue, the man indicated that yes, it was very close. When I asked to make a reservation, he said something that surprised me: “We’re first come, first serve. No reservations.”

We decided to stay downtown and take a cab the five miles to the venue.

Elitist

2009-09-30T20:40:00.001-04:00

This topic came about as I was lamenting my absurdly poor measuring skills. I can never measure anything with any accuracy. My tolerance for measuring with a ruler is +- 1” per 1/2 linear foot. And that’s gracious. I can’t even measure a 2x4 accurately…I keep coming up with 3”x1 1/2”!

When I was in high school, I was a terrible student. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the work, I just wouldn’t. Thus, it makes even less sense that I refused to take shop class. There would have been minimal homework, and it probably would have been a lot of fun.

The reason I refused to take shop class is that I was an elitist. I refused to “lower” myself to take a preparatory class for people who would enter the skilled trades. Never mind that many of the people who did take shop class graduated with higher grade points than I did.

Fate has a funny sense of humor, though. When I was 19, my friend Gary got me an internship at a tool and die shop. I worked in the computer aided design department. Ironically, once I saw the marriage between computers and shop equipment, I would spend an absurd amount of time trying to learn what I missed out on by not taking shop class in the first place.

Now…the real kick in the gut is that as an adult, shop classes are pretty hard to come by. If I take classes at LCC, I’ve got to take at least one introduction before getting to the “good” class, and then…I doubt we’re going to get to pour molten aluminum!

Drag

2009-09-28T22:16:00.001-04:00

When I rode my bike to and from the office, I used to pedal as fast as I could down the steepest hill on the route. The highest speed I was able to achieve was 30.2 MPH, as tucked as I could get on my commuter bike. It felt less like slicing through the air and more like pushing against a mattress. The reason can be found in the quadratic drag equation.

The last variable in the equation is velocity. It might seem sensible that drag at 10 MPH would be double drag at 5 MPH. In fact, drag at 10 miles per hour is four times drag at 5 miles per hour because velocity is squared in the quadratic drag equation. In other words, the faster you are going, the more difficult it becomes.

Drag is insidious. Travelling about in our cars, we easily forget how much energy we expend fighting it. Drag does not exist only in the realm of physics, it occurs in organizations as well.

Many of us have worked with someone who brings “negative energy” to work sessions. Some people seem to be capable of only the most direly pessimistic predictions. Sometimes, drag exists and we don’t even know about it until a key person is absent from a meeting, and the meeting is doubly productive.

Just because we get used to the drag that some people bring to an organization does not mean that the effect is harmless. Take a look at the product marketing life cycle and decide where you want your organization to sell products. The second stage (product growth) is the most lucrative, with firms enjoying low competition and high demand, which leads to higher margins.

Firms playing catch-up are likely to find themselves arriving on the scene during product maturity or decline, where margins are lowest. If your firm, department, or group seems to struggle with offering the high demand products and services at the right time, perhaps you have gotten used to too much drag.

Put a Fence Around That Yard!

2009-09-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

Quite a while ago, I was out for a run. I was about 1 1/2 miles into my run, when I encountered a runners’ nightmare. My first thought was pretty typical for this sort of situation “If people can’t control the behavior of their minions, why can’t they at least put a fence around their yard?”

The next moment, they were upon me. Three of them. I kept my pace, calm and cool, not wanting to provoke them. The two females made it about a block before they tired out and ran back home. To his credit, the male lasted two blocks before he turned tail and ran back home.

Ok, to be fair, they did ask if they could join me. And none of them had shoes on either. Still, if people can’t keep their teenagers from chasing people down the street they really should put a fence around their yard.

It takes a village

2009-09-27T00:21:00.001-04:00

In the United States, the general populace has the opinion that people should just mind their own business. In fact, we have an entire political party based on the idea.

On the surface, the logic seems pretty sound. Live and let live. I’ve often wondered what social problems result from this attitude later on. For example, in other countries, it would not be terribly uncommon for someone to scold a stranger’s child. In the US, this is essentially taboo.

Perhaps my musing on the topic was premature. Aimee arrived home a few minutes late. Her delay was caused by a very small boy standing next to a very busy road. It would have been bad enough if he were just standing at the end of the drive, but he wasn’t. He was throwing rocks at passing traffic. The poor creature made mistake of throwing a pebble at Aimee as she passed. Within seconds, she was speaking to his mother while he spied on the affair from around the corner of the house. It didn’t sound like the experience ended well for him.

Today I had a more positive experience in the same vein. A couple of young girls were in line in front of me at a convenience store, buying candy. The clerk was patiently working through their options and helping them sort through their change. This is a pretty common site for very small children, but these girls were about thirteen. She didn’t lose patience or get short with them. It was probably the best math lesson they have had in years.

Bad Parents

2009-08-30T21:29:00.001-04:00

This weekend we had a very special treat for Evelyn this weekend. Sesame Street Live! Elmo holds a very special place in Evelyn’s heart…second only to Minnie Mouse.

The show was at 7 pm, but we got to East Lansing a bit early. We killed some time perusing Sears and picked up a set of pajamas for Evelyn so we could get her ready for bed when we left the show. As the show neared, we drove to the Breslin Center and parked in the event lot.

Strangely enough, the lot was empty except for perhaps two other cars. A family was walking into the parking lot with a youngster holding an Elmo doll, so I asked why they were headed the wrong direction.

“Well, we knew that Sesame Street is in town and we thought there might be a show tonight.”

Odd, I thought there was a show. We doubled checked our tickets and both of us had that stomach-in-throat sinking feeling. There was a seven o’ clock show. Unfortunately our show was Friday, not Saturday. Having pumped Evelyn up we had to explain to her that we were idiots and showed up a day late for the show. It would have been easier if she had thrown a tantrum, but she didn’t. She just started crying quietly.

Aimee explained that we made a mistake, but that we’d try to fix it. When we got home we found that, much to our relief, there was a Sunday show. We bought tickets and updated Evelyn. She reassured us “You not make a mistake!”

So, we caught up to Elmo a day later than we expected. I’m at a loss as to how both Aimee and I managed to screw up the date, since it was on both of our calendars!

Growler Goes Off-Leash

2009-08-24T23:28:00.001-04:00

This evening, Evelyn wanted to visit her Grandma. We called and arranged a time to visit. Since I hadn’t run today, I decided to run while Aimee would ride her bike. She would take the bike trailer and pull Evelyn behind her.

Now, Grandpa would be heartbroken if we arrived without Abby. We were in a hurry so we pitched Abbey into the trailer with Evelyn, but without her harness or leash. At this point I need to confess something. Abby gets very upset when she’s separated from people she really likes. As I ran in front of the bike, she whimpered and carried on as though we had cut off one of her legs…but we made it to our destination uneventfully.

Things were a bit different on the way back, though. Abby made the same raucous, except that this time she emerged from the back of the bicycle trailer and landed on the road. To her credit, she didn’t miss a beat. Since we didn’t have her collar or leash, we put her back in the trailer and instructed Evelyn to keep an eye on her.

Rriiigggghhhhht. Suffice it to say that poor Aimee nearly went over her handlebars when Abby crawled out the front of the trailer and nearly got run over. She would have too, if I hadn’t grabbed the trailer and stopped trailer and bike in their tracks. The bike trailer is completely enclosed and velcroed shut, so it’s a bit of a mystery as to how our little monster-dog got out. It probably has something to do with her four pound size.

This time we realized that we certainly could not put her back in the trailer. I carried her for a while but she was getting jostled quite a bit. Finally Aimee suggested that I could put her down and try to get her to stick with me.

With Andy, sure, no problem. With Abby, I dunno. She doesn’t normally get distracted, and she does normally come when I call her…however she is really terrible about healing. We didn’t have many other options though, so I tried.

First we ran about two blocks at an 8:45/mile pace. Her little legs were a blur. When she finally began to tire I slowed to a walk. Per usual, Abby tried to get ahead of me. Also per usual, I chastised her for getting ahead. Unlike usual, she realized that she didn’t have the comfort of her leash on. Rather than running ahead and relying on her leash for communication, she realized that she would need to keep track of me herself…and she did. We walked the remaining three blocks without incident whatsoever, Abby walking next to me.

Not bad for a six month old puppy!

"Walking" Baby

2009-08-19T09:19:00.002-04:00

R.E.S.P.E.C.T....um, please?

2009-08-18T16:32:00.001-04:00

Our refrigerator was doubling as an air conditioning unit for quite a while. The door seals were miserable, and the refrigerator consistently froze its contents despite being on the lowest setting. Finally, I grudgingly admitted that perhaps we really should look into a new refrigerator.

We went to Sears and found a model we liked. After some consideration, though, we decided to buy a cheaper refrigerator and a low end stove. Both models were still much better than our existing appliances. When we got to the checkout, the trouble began. First, the extended warranty.

The salesman decided to inform us "This refrigerator comes with a 1 year warranty on the compressor. For $140 you can get two years added on top of the factory warranty." Some quick math had me foaming at the mouth. This joker wanted me to pay 25% of the purchase price for the extended warranty. I declined the warranty. Our previous refrigerator lasted 20 years. If our new refrigerator lasts fewer than five years, it will be the absolute last appliance that I purchase from Sears. Ever.

Next, the Sears card. If I would be so kind as to apply for a Sears card, I could have free home delivery plus 5% off the purchase price. Now this sounded pretty good. I really didn't want to have to dispose of my old appliances. I started in on the paperwork. Now, any reasonable person would have put their pen down when they saw the word "Citi" in the contract. Apparently, I am no such person. They accepted my application and put the charge on it.

The bill arrived yesterday, and I paid the balance before they could earn any interest. Why so eager to pay the balance? Sears shouldn't be commended for their unfriendly practices. What's so unfriendly, you might wonder. I'll tell you what...I've got a 740 credit rating and these sheisters tried foisting off a card with a 20% interest rate. I can't put cash into a safe investment which returns more than 1% right now, and these idiots think they are going to get away with this kind of robbery? Seriously?

What is Sears really thinking? Do they really believe that trying to take advantage of their customers is a good long term strategy? Obviously, that's exactly what they think. Unfortunately, they are hardly alone.

CNC Cutting

2009-08-16T13:19:00.001-04:00

Our friends came to visit yesterday, and we got to meet their new dog Cookie. Gary is an electronics whiz, so I thought he might get a kick out of some CNC goodness.

When I first purchased my mill, decent CAM software was really expensive, and you couldn’t necessarily trust the results. Using CAMBAM I was able to create the text, and the three programs to cut it out.

The first program profiled the text (which reads “Crum”). The second program pocketed from the text to the edge of the wood, and the third program cut around the edge of the wood. CamBam automatically added holding tabs to the edge of the wood, which keeps it in the wood in the fixture.

Surprised

2009-08-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

Aimee has been working tirelessly this week painting our bedroom. It looks great, incidentally. This evening I was outside repairing our utility trailer. This endeavor involved using a reciprocating saw, angle grinder, and MIG welder. All of these take their fair share of electricity. It was thus no surprise when Aimee peeked out the door and asked if I had blown a breaker. A quick tug on the saw trigger verified that my own power was still available. As it turned out, the lights in our bedroom no longer worked.

A quick check in the breaker panel revealed that one of the breakers had tripped. I reset it, but it tripped instantly. Like an idiot, I tried three more times before reaching the conclusion that something in the line was a direct short. I sauntered up the stairs.

Due to the painting project, all the covers were off the light switches. It didn’t take long to find the switch with soot along one side. Closer examination revealed that someone had placed a screw across the terminals. There could be only one such person.

“Aimee”, I inquired, “did Evelyn say anything?”

“Yes. She said ‘The lights are broken. I’m gonna go help Dada.’ Then she took off.”

Defensive Sociopathic Behavior

2009-08-01T10:20:00.001-04:00

This week at the office was difficult and long. Three events which I caused created an enormous amount of trouble. Two of them were for a very good reason, and the other was for a very bad reason. As we evaluate our personal behavior, the litmus test for performance is the “repeat offender” quiz. Could this event occur again? If I had the chance to do it over, would I change what I did?

Regardless of how well we perform, even making the right decisions can be stressful as we evaluate personal needs vs. corporate needs. In my own case, I didn’t sleep much last week. When I spoke with a friend about it, he cautioned me against taking such events too personally. He’s right in many ways. The higher a person’s responsibility, the more stress they will encounter during the course of making decisions…even if they are the right decisions. A good leader who becomes paralyzed as a result of making difficult but necessary decisions is destined for burnout.

On the other hand, meltdowns at large companies such as Enron and Tyco have elicited the same question from different people: “How do such self-righteous, uncaring people become CEOs?" In light of my week and the advice I outlined above, is it really possible for someone who doesn’t exhibit some of these behaviors to be an effective CEO? How long would it take them to burn out?

Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist observed that a surprising number of corporate executives scored quite high when his checklist was applied to them. Are these officers sociopathic before they become powerful, or do they change as they gain power? What if the sociopathic behavior displayed by corporate officers is defensive? Is it possible that they endure so much stress that their defense mechanism is to stop allowing themselves the luxury of stress?

Incidentally, Mr. Hare has written a book about his observations titled Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To work. Perhaps he should consider writing a book about environments that foster psychopathy as well!

If Only Baby Knew

2009-06-29T07:19:00.001-04:00

Evelyn’s Cabbage Patch Doll, Baby, has a bunk bed sized just for

her. Our puppy, Abby, has taken over the bottom bunk of the bed in the evenings. Last night she was there again, despite having a perfectly comfortable dog bed available to her. The other night Evelyn slept her bed with a foot hanging off the side, and Abby slept in the bunk with her foot hanging off the side as well!

Click the picture for a larger view.

Goodbye

2009-05-30T22:49:00.001-04:00

About the time that I was born, my father had brought home two puppies. They were pit-bulls, but they didn’t get to stay long thanks to my severe allergies. Mom mentioned them on occasion as I grew up, and this piqued my curiosity. These were the dogs that had such a terrible reputation, yet my Mom the church lady thought these puppies were worth mentioning fifteen years after she had them. One day Mom announced that she had found an advertisement for someone who had pit-bull puppies, and that we should go over just so I could see what they looked like. We went. I brow-beat Mom until she allowed me to plunk down $75 for a puppy.

The puppy’s name was Precious, but even as a small dog she was incredibly muscular. I changed her name to Andy, and we soon became fast friends. For the next several years, I refused to go anywhere without my dog. She went to every high school party, every park in the county, and into the homes of more than one chagrined friend. I routinely took her into local shops as a protest against the exile that most dogs endure in the United States.

A close friend, who delighted in issue orders to her, once referred to Andy as “The Machine”. Such was her training that I had complete confidence in my ability to control her on walks without a leash. I would purposefully seek out noisy, distracting environments to take her into in order to advance her training. Not only would she heel and sit crisply, she could climb barriers, crawl under fences, and retrieve hidden objects.

Even as a swimmer, Andy was amazing. She would swim for hours on end, even diving to retrieve sticks from under the water. On one particularly memorable occasion, a fellow approached us on a walk. He completely disregard me, while warmly greeting my dog. He had seen her years earlier, trying to drag the floats out of a local dam. She had tried in vain to pull the cabled buoys to shore for well over an hour, and had thus emblazoned herself in this man’s memory. He couldn’t remember me, but he remembered my dog.

When Evelyn joined us, some of our family members warned us about a child in a home with two pit-bulls. Our first pediatrician was one of those people, and it was that first day in the hospital that we knew this was not the doctor we wanted for our child. In fact, both of our dogs were incredibly patient with Evelyn. Despite being hit, screamed at, “walked”, and generally tormented by Evelyn, neither Andy nor Hades ever expressed any ire with our small child.

Today as I watched Andy, I realized that her foot was infected again. Her health has been deteriorating over the last year and half. After a candid discussion with our veterinarian, it soon became clear that while we could treat her symptoms, we could not restore her quality of life. This topic is something that has preoccupied my thoughts frequently over the last year, so today I was neither surprised nor unprepared. Given her poor health, there was really no decision to make. Andy was almost precisely 15 1/2 years old. She will be much missed, but much remembered as she was in her prime.

Life is Too Short

2009-05-29T13:05:00.001-04:00

After returning from lunch yesterday, I stopped at our office coffee machine for an afternoon cup-o-joe. A quick assessment of the coffee pot revealed a burnt, acidic aroma. The coffee had clearly been sitting there untouched for well over an hour.

Fortunately I had an epiphany a couple of weeks ago which prepared me for burnt office coffee. Life is too short for bad coffee. I retrieved the french press and bag of premium grounds from my office and proceeded to brew a bold, delicious cup of coffee.

My wife recently shared a conversation she had with another student teacher who had refused a job offer in Hawaii. I marveled that someone would turn down such an offer, but it was not until this morning that I finally put several pieces of information together.

Today is a Friday, but I decided to take the morning off from work. At approximately 7 A.M. I woke up; at approximately 8 A.M. I gave up on trying to sleep any longer. After playing briefly with our puppy, I enjoyed a three mile jog and a hot shower. By nine twenty I was sipping a latte and waiting outside the post office for it to open.

This turned out to be a minor, short lived irritant. Why could the post office not keep hours compatible with working folks? For a moment I contemplated lodging a complaint when they finally opened. The next moment, I had another powerful realization.

life is too short. Too short for bad coffee, and too short for petty grudges. It is too short for enduring unhappiness in ourselves or others, and it is too short for unrequited love. Life is too short not to take job offers in exotic locations, and it is too short not to enjoy. Life is too short to be right every time, and it is too short for regretting things that we have never done.

If we pursue happiness as a destination, we will almost surely fail to find it. If, however, we accept that happiness occurs unexpectedly as we experience new things perhaps we can enjoy more fleeting moments of happiness and fewer fleeting moments of irritation with stodgy institutions that open counterproductively late.

Bizarre MS Office Problem

2009-05-23T22:45:00.001-04:00

Earlier this week, Microsoft Office stopped working on my computer. The same thing happened whether I was using Office XP or Office 2003, and it was maddening. While I might put on bravado and claim that I don’t like MS products, that’s pretty much a lie. I pay $10 each, every month for my wife and I to have Exchange accounts. If I’m paying for Exchange, I want Outlook to work too.

The error indicated that “Word [Outlook, Excel, etc] is not installed for the current user.” So, I did some searching and found a whole litany of reasons why this might be. After spending an entire week installing and uninstalling office multiple times daily I had decided that most of the “fixes” were simply superstitious coincidences. Every time I saw a post indicating a fix, I wanted to scream “LIAR”!

My user account is an administrator account, so permissions seemed an unlikely culprit. Oddly enough, though, the machine Administrator account could run Office. Strange. So, I created a test user with limited authority. That user could also start Office. Harumph. My logical conclusion was that my user profile must be corrupt, so I reset my profile. Still no dice.

The final step was to completely delete my user account and create a new account with the same name. And (drumroll please….) it worked! After reclaiming permissions on my original profile, I got my settings back too.

This begs the question “What’s up with that?” What prompts a problem with someone’s security account? Should I expect more shenanigans? Perhaps. In the meantime, I’m simply happy to have Outlook open and synchronizing in the background.

Honestly honey, it just followed me home!

2009-05-11T18:13:00.000-04:00

My big surprise this week was supposed to be that my new business cards from Moo came in. That really isn’t as lame as it sounds. They are very cool cards, designed by yours truly. Anyway, I raced in the back door and nearly broke my neck racing back out the front door to retrieve my cards from the mailbox.

The reason for the nearly broken neck was a very large box. A brief review of the shipping label had my curiosity piqued. Hmmm…Hobby E-Store. There was only one thing that item that I could fathom might come from that store, and be the right size.

I wonder who might have sent such an incredibly cool toy to me without saying anything? Thank you!

Notes after [trying] to fly…

I’ve had an E-Sky Lama 4 for a long time. In the picture above, you might notice a lot of tape and aftermarket parts. There is a really good reason for that. I crashed it a lot. In fact, I probably bought the thing two or three times. By now, I’m pretty good at flying it. I thought that transitioning to a collective pitch would be pretty easy.

I was wrong. First, the Belt-CP is bigger. A lot bigger. That makes it scary for two reasons. First, it will hurt more when it hits you…and it will hurt more when you buy new parts.

Now, the other scary thing is that it’s a 3D helicopter. That means that faster blades do not really equate to more lift. It just means that the blades are moving faster. You have to tell it how much lift to give you. It doesn’t care for idly sliding sideways, the way my Lama does. The slightest, tiniest movement on the controls sends the thing rocketing off in a different direction.

After trying to do a simple hover (in my very small living room, where there is no wind), my heart was in my throat and my pulse was in the range that I normally expect only when running away from rabid squirrels.

After a few minutes, I began to remember my humble beginnings with the Lama. For several days I would get it an inch or two off the floor and then I would have to set it down because it was out of control. It will probably take the same amount of practice with this helicopter. The only problem is that I doubt Evelyn will sleep through the noise, or Aimee will permit me to fly it in the living room while she’s here!

By the way, if you’ve ever tried to fly a 3D helicopter on FMS…yeah, it really is that hard to fly one in real life!

SmartWool Rocks

2009-04-27T12:21:00.002-04:00

Having never had a pair of running shoes that fit properly, I finally decided to visit a store which specializes in footwear. The obvious local choice was Playmaker's in East Lansing. A classmate from high school works there, so I asked for him when I went to visit.

Tony was happy to help, and after a few tries fitted me with a Brooks shoe. The fit was superb, owing in part to the narrow (B) width of the shoe. Something that had struck Tony was my recounting of the numerous blisters I had suffered while running. After finding the right shoe, he asked what kind of socks I wear when I run. "Cotton", I replied handily. He advised that I try a pair of SmartWool socks, and he threw a pair in with the shoes.

After running with the shoes and socks for several months, I can honestly report a 100% improvement. Until purchasing these shoes, I had never gone running without earning a blister. Since buying these shoes, I have never gone running and gotten a blister (my running journal is at http://coins.bimjournals.com/).

Last night I packed up my running bag, but couldn't find a clean and complete pair of my handy SmartWool socks. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to try the Pepsi Challenge between the cotton socks and the wool socks. It might be that my comparison was unfair, as I ran four miles last night (in wool socks) and two miles this morning. Perhaps the two runs were too close together. I don't think so, though. Although my feet aren't nearly as blistered as they would have been in the past, I can feel the distinct burn of rawness on the inside of my left foot.

My conclusion is that the SmartWool socks work exactly the way they are supposed to. By wicking moisture away from your foot, the socks are supposed to remain properly fitted to your foot and keep your skin comparatively dry. By the way, I have also been using these socks when I ice skate (I used to use polyester dress socks). They have worked as nicely for skating as they do for running.

A caveat: I have also tried using polyester socks for running. Believe it or not, they are also superb when compared to cotton socks. If you can get past the snickers when you run down the sidewalk in your black poly socks, give it a try. You may be surprised.

The Stigma of Failure

2009-04-19T17:17:00.001-04:00

Peter Drucker once observed that "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Per usual Drucker's wisdom is timeless and on-point. Why, then, do we spend so much time performing tasks only because we have always done them?

The typical answer to this question is laziness. We are too lazy to question processes, and thus to improve them. Laziness certainly plays a role in perpetuating inefficient, antiquated processes but there are more powerful elements as well.

A couple of years ago I took a hockey class. The coach lined up several cones, demonstrated a skating pattern, and then ordered the class to skate the pattern just as he had. We complied, each carefully skating the pattern in turn. When we finished, the coach chastised us. "That was all wrong." he declared. "Not a single one of you fell down, and if you didn't fall down, you aren't trying hard enough!"

There are a lot of reasons for failure, but the absence of failure does not always indicate success. It may merely signify a complete lack of effort.

There are both good and bad reasons for failure. Good reasons for failure include trying a new process, or improving an existing process. A good failure is one that is endured when a person works outside their comfort zone. Bad reasons for failure are lack of due diligence and inappropriate planning.

Organizations wishing to improve themselves must learn that failure for the right reasons is an action that deserves praise, not derision. Too often, employees are paralyzed by fear of failure. They spend inordinate amounts of time justifying their decisions, or worse, they choose not to make decisions at all. They are so terrified of blame that they abhor all things new or different.

Companies wishing to succeed must be willing to change. In order to facilitate change, these same companies must also be willing to accept some level of failure. Changing employee perceptions of failure is a long process that begins with changing the question "Who is at fault?" to "What have we learned?"

More Fun Than A Barrel Of Monkeys

2008-12-03T22:49:00.002-05:00

In high school, I scoffed at the notion of taking shop class. Instead, I spent my time working on computers. That did alright by me until I decided to build a small jet engine, oh, ten years ago. It was then that I realized that perhaps I should not have scoffed so much.

By my reckoning, it will be approximately ten more years before I finish the aforementioned project, however today I reached a major milestone, thanks to the outstanding advice of my brother.

The plans call for a spun aluminum intake. At first, I didn't know what that meant. Once I discovered, I tried spinning some aluminum. Multiple times, as a matter of fact. The only consistent outcome was failure. Then Alan's sage advice rescued me.

Anneal the aluminum first. He was right. Along with that, I watched some very cool YouTube videos. I noticed that the "pros" don't spin very fast, and they use a lot of leverage.

I tried. It worked! When you look at the following pictures, you'll realize that I still need a lot of practice. That being said, I'm pretty happy with the "proof" of concept. With a bit more practice, slightly thicker sheet, and a new set of metal gears for my lathe...I might be on to something!

Clarification:

The pop can in the following photograph is simply to demonstrate scale. The raw material was a piece of flat aluminum sheet about 1/30th of an inch thick. The mandrill (form) is made from oak, and turned to shape.

I stand corrected!

2008-11-06T21:23:00.003-05:00

I am shocked at three things. First, of course, being wrong. Second, five million people in Michigan voted! That's almost as amazing as the number of them that voted for the medical marijuana initiative, despite the terrible billboard mentioned below! 60%!

Unfortunately, I stand corrected on the post immediately prior to this one!

Why Medical Marijuana is Doomed

2008-10-30T21:53:00.001-04:00

While driving through Lansing today, I saw a billboard encouraging voters to vote for a "medical marijuana" initiative. It took only seconds for me to realize why the initiative is doomed. Let's analyze for a moment.

This billboard probably costs $600 each month, plus the setup cost. Obviously someone really put some resources into it. The idea is to get the public behind the initiative. However...

If that's the case, it would probably be best if the website at the bottom of the ad were something other than a hydroponics supply shop. It would make sense to invest the money in a proper domain name...something like www.natureheal.org or something similar. Likewise, it would be smart to steal from the BCBS playbook and have a plain white sign with pastel, neutral writing on it. Psychedelic purple background with green pot leaf covered writing probably conveys the impression that whoever designed and paid for the sign was, well, stoned man.

For Sale: Two Cats, Slightly Used

2008-10-05T09:39:00.001-04:00

At the height of the animal boom, we purchased two cats with an exploding PAW under the assumption that the cats would only appreciate. After the Great Pet Crash of 07 we found ourselves saddled with maintenance fees that we couldn't afford, and then the exploding PAW increased.

For the last several months we've been unable to keep up with our feline mortgage and are being foreclosed, so now we're forced to sell at rock-bottom prices. For the pair, we could part with these two cats for the fire sale price of only $599!

How Do They Do It?

2008-10-01T19:41:00.001-04:00

At precisely 8 AM this morning, my paycheck was automatically deposited into my checking account. At about 8:01, most of it was automatically taken back out. Reflecting upon this, I reminded myself that Aimee and I have been financially fortunate. We hardly live in excess, but we keep our bills paid, our home repaired, and our cars running.

Next I wondered, how do other people do it? We're fortunate, so how do the not-so-fortunate get by?

On the way home, this question slipped my mind while I muttered various oaths about Washington Fat Cats while listening to the radio. By the time I picked Evelyn up, I had completely forgotten my "ghost check" from this morning.

For the past several weeks our neighbors have been scarce. This evening, they were home. I didn't have time to say "Hi" while unloading the car, but later on I stopped by to chat. When I queried about my neighbor's scarcity he replied "We're being foreclosed on." His response saddened me, as we've enjoyed these neighbors very much. One of them lost their job, and they were unable to keep their home on a single income.

Out of twelve houses on our block, this is the fourth one which is empty. It is the second house in foreclosure, and there is at least one on the adjacent block. I strongly expect another on our block to enter foreclosure shortly.

Usually I grumble about poor fiscal management when I hear of a foreclosure, however these folks didn't have a huge house or a pair of new cars. How are those other, less fortunate folks doing it? They aren't.

Happiness, Meditation, and Multi-Tasking

2008-09-21T22:14:00.001-04:00

Multi-tasking does not seem to be the buzzword that it was a couple of years ago. That is a good thing. Multi-tasking is good for machines, bad for people!

Most of us have experienced anxiety as a result of too many responsibilities, obligations, or too much thinking. The solace of meditation brings relief to a cluttered mind, but meditation is too encumbered. Taking time out of an already busy schedule to explicitly do nothing is downright bizarre.

Quite a while ago I had a book which espoused the benefits of "Zen driving". That's right...enlightenment through driving a car. The book was not as strange as it sounds. The gist was that one may achieve a meditative state by immersing themselves in a mundane task. My Zen driving is usually Zen soldering or Zen programming. They both lower my blood pressure and make me a much happier person.

What then, about this multi-tasking. If the act of uncluttering our thoughts brings about stress relief, what is the effect of multi-tasking on our stress level? My conclusion is that to multi-task means to be perpetually interrupted. Constant interruptions create a clutter of thoughts, and a clutter of thoughts leads to higher levels of stress.

The next time you're at the office you might consider setting your phone to "Do Not Disturb" and closing your email. It may do wonders for your blood pressure!

Stanching Greatness

2008-09-21T21:56:00.001-04:00

This month's issue of Men's Journal (October 2008, p. 30) has an interview with Thom Beers, creator of such television staples as Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. Think what you wish about the quality of his shows, there is little denying that he is a superstar amongst film-makers. He is talented and driven, to be sure.

There were a number of things in the article that indicate Thom may be of questionable moral character. Having found myself glued to many of his shows, it did not surprise me to discover that he is a "colorful" personality. He did, however, mention something that really resonated.

"Thank God Ritalin wasn't big when I was a kid or it would have calmed me down and I'd be a middle manager at a car lot."

His statement makes me wonder how many great people we have lost to the complacency afforded by legal modern drugs.

"Magician's Next Stunt Could Leave Him Blind"

2008-09-21T21:35:00.001-04:00

The above headline on CNN.Com reminded me that I need to call my Grandmother.

A Great Product for Anyone Who Cuts Paper

2008-09-06T19:57:00.003-04:00

Several years ago, my wife and I visited my brother in New Mexico. His neighbor had the coolest thing I had seen in quite a while. It was a vector printer, alternatively called a vector cutter. He used it to cut out vinyl masks. He would then put the mask on a piece of glass or wood and sand blast it.

The device was intriguing. After checking on the price of such a device, I decided that perhaps they weren't for me. For years I kept checking back on the price, itching to buy one. Then something odd happened while I was slumming around Michael's or Hobby Lobby. I found the Cricut.

The Cricut is a vector cutter aimed at people who probably don't care much for computers. People who make scrap books, cards, etc. It seemed like a good birthday gift for Aimee, so I got her one. It is amazing. In fact, the only complaint I have about it is that the ladies featured in the "getting started" DVD are scary. Real scary.

Normally paper cutting would be done with a die. Dies are expensive, and they only let you cut one size. The Cricut lets you scale any pattern in its library. Unlike most vector cutters, the Cricut lets you use a normal piece of paper instead of a roll. Just stick the paper onto a sticky cutting board, feed the machine, position the cutter, and press "Go".

The machine is daunting at first, but after a few minutes its use becomes second nature. The designs that you can cut are stored on cartridges that must be bought separately. They are expensive, but as I noted before, they replace very expensive dies. It is surprising what a great value an $80 cartridge really is.

Vector cutters can do a lot. They can cut paper, vinyl, pictures, etc. These materials can then be used on a myriad of projects. For example, you could make screen cutting masks using only construction paper and fiberglass window screen. You could use vinyl and create stickers or masks for sand blasting.

The best thing about this product is that it's portable. No computer to fuss with, no boxes of dies. Just one machine and some small cartridges. It's right at home on the craft table. It isn't often that we find a product that was thought out so carefully. I'd buy another one without a second thought...and I might even let Aimee use it.

Making Great Products

2008-09-03T21:30:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wondered how great products get created? If you have ever worked with a marketing department, I'll bet that you've cursed them at least once. Marketers are forever promising the impossible...but more often than not, it seems that the impossible is what gets delivered.

A couple weeks ago, Fawaz Gruosi of Grisogono was featured in Men's Journal (June, 2008). In the article, he describes a new idea for a watch. This watch is a mechanical digital watch. It requires regular winding, but has digits on the face instead of analog hands. You can imagine the meeting when he dropped this idea on his engineers. First, of course, they laughed.

He was serious, though, and he wanted his watch. "My strength is not having a notion of the difficulties behind the ideas", he remarked for the interview.

Sometimes greatness requires ignorance.

Changing The Guard

2008-08-23T16:37:00.002-04:00

Changing of the Guard

The first applications of Information Technology involved highly numeric calculations. The original guards of I.T. were scientists. As business accepted the new tools offered by technology, these tools were often applied to accounting related tasks. Today, we still abide by the incorrect notion that I.T. employees should be computer scientists. Take a look at a few job descriptions and you’ll note that many employers think that they want I.T. employees with computer science degrees.

They are dead wrong. While technically minded people are often hired into I.T. positions because of their knowledge, it is an aptitude of another sort that can change from Old Guard Information Technology into Integrated Technology. Technology staff should have excellent communications and business skills. Most technology skills can be acquired, but it seems as though technically gifted staff often lack either the interest or the capacity for communications.

Perhaps because of its mysterious, highly technical beginnings, Information Technology commands tight control over its subjects yet often fails to deliver exactly what its customers need. Internal customers are faced with a conundrum. They are required to use their computers, yet they are often severely disciplined for misusing them. This leads to a communications schism between I.T. and its internal customers. Staff who are afraid of misusing a tool have little chance of mastering it.

When I was in college for my programming degree, a systems analysis text declared that Information Technology should hold a place in the corporation which acts at an executive level. Of course, that text was written by an I.T. professional. In a perfect world, perhaps I.T. would hold such a position. Reality, though, requires something a little different.

Since highly technical staff are usually hired into I.T. departments, their business acumen is typically inversely related to their technical skills. These people are frequently the last people that a company may wish to introduce to a customer. The detrimental effect of this situation is that technology is often explicitly avoided by executives, despite the fact that they stand to benefit from its use. Perhaps the situation is such that using technology is more difficult than not using it. Not because of technical problems, but people problems.

It is time for a new perspective on technical staff. Why should businesses hire technically trained people, if they need business people? They shouldn’t. Perhaps every I.T. department will require some highly technical staff, however those staff who interact with internal customers should be selected specifically because they have more empathy than technical expertise.

The Road to Happiness

2008-08-19T22:04:00.001-04:00

Seth Godin wrote recently about the job of marketers.

What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want does.
And want is created by us, the marketers.

Someone must want (or need) a product in order to buy it. It is the job of the marketer to create the desire (want or need) for the product.

Toaism tells us that one may experience peace (happiness) in the absence of desire. Does it then follow that we can increase our happiness by cutting off the barrage of marketing messages we're exposed to on a daily basis?

Aimee and I watch almost no television. Perhaps three hours per week. We live relatively modestly, but we're hardly free from desire. I subscribe to a number of electronic magazines, and (of course) they are choc full of advertisements.

While avoiding marketing messages might lead to greater happiness, is it really practical? When we think about the products we purchase and our overall happiness, I think it becomes clear that most purchases do not increase happiness. We still keep making purchases though, as if transfixed by the never-materializing promise of happiness.

Jacked!

2008-08-18T22:36:00.001-04:00

The other morning I got in my car and immediately thought "Gee, why is my radio bezel on the floor?" The answer, of course, is that my radio was stolen. Again. This routine is getting old. This time I didn't have my doors locked, but I'm not sure if that cost me a radio or saved me another broken window.

As I sat at my office desk, fuming, I finally concocted a plan to defeat radio thievery once and for all! Wasting no time, I went to the Bazaar and found something better than a radio. It was a small, 12 volt amplifier with volume, bass, and treble knobs. It was $14 plus shipping. Of course, it was in China, so shipping was $15. Perfect. It isn't a radio, but it can play my satellite radio and Aimee's iPod. The best part? Even a low life thief won't want to steal this thing! A person would have to be crazy to want it! (Erm, don't take that literally)

When my new toy arrived, I was giddy. Aimee picked up a radio harness for me, and I set about wiring up my new "radio". When I finally got out to the car, humming "Into the Wild Blue Yonder" under my breath, my happiness was short lived. Despite the label on the wiring harness, it did not in fact fit a Kia Rio.

Today I exchanged the harness (naturally the guys at the store didn't believe that it was the wrong harness until they had also stymied themselves on my car). This evening I got my car amplifier installed at last.

Now, in case you are uninitiated...Chinese style seems to favor loud. Gaudy, I mean. When I first unpacked this thing, I noticed a clear bezel around the volume knob. "Great", I thought, "probably a calming green LED is behind that." When I turned on the amplifier and hooked it up to my Sirius receiver, my initial reaction was not "Hey, that sounds ok"....it was "Is this thing going to give me seizures?"

In case there was a danger of it getting stolen, I'm pretty sure the flashing light will put the kibosh on that.

2008-07-30T19:19:00.000-04:00

Reminiscing.

There is little good sense that circumstances cannot pervert.

2008-07-24T20:39:00.000-04:00

The Insomniacs' Union

2008-07-24T08:35:00.001-04:00

As a teenager, I frequently arrived home late at night or stayed up late-especially on the weekends. My grandmother lived with us, and it was not infrequent that I would run into her at two in the morning, making herself a snack in the kitchen. Her complaint was always the same. She had "leg cramps". It wasn't until I started experiencing my own "leg cramps" that I realized she probably had what we now call "restless legs syndrome".

My own sleeping habits are now similar to my grandmother's. It isn't unusual for me to get up after trying to sleep for a couple of hours and hang out in the kitchen. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and need to move about. If I exercise during the day, my legs don't usually bother me at night. Failure to run or bike is almost a guarantee for sleeping problems.

The past two nights, our daughter has woken in the middle of the night, gotten out of bed, and come to find her Mom. Should she and I start a union for insomniacs?

Cooking With Evy

2008-06-15T22:28:00.001-04:00

"Dada!" Although I had barely gotten the door closed behind me, my 21 month old daughter was eagerly beckoning to me. She and my wife were sitting on the bench at the kitchen table. Actually, she was standing on the bench.

My wife looked wryly at me and said "Welcome to cooking with Evy." I was a bit confused, but I approached the table for further instructions.

"Dada, nee" she said emphatically while patting the bench next to her. In case you don't speak Holbrook vernacular, nee clearly means "sit". I did. It was then that I realized what I had walked into.

The child had a frying pan on the kitchen table, and she was making good use of it for "cooking" a scone that she rescued from my wife's purse while snooping. The poor scone had seen better days. It was freshly salted and peppered (did I mention that it was a blueberry scone?), and some water had been splashed on it for good measure.

While I looked on in fascination, she used a spatula to shuffle the goopy mess around the pan. Apparently she had commandeered the scone, then she liberated the frying pan from a cupboard and arranged them on the table. Finally, she was forced to ask her mother for the spatula.

"Dada!" My attention refocused on the poor scone. She was pointing at it. Clearly she intended for me to try her delicious creation. There was no way I was eating even a little bit of soggy, salted, peppery scone.

"Why don't I let you have the first bite?" I asked, while turning the offer back to her. She laughed maniacally at me. Clearly that was out of the question. In fact, I could tell by her laughing that her serious insistence that I try the scone was a rouse. She had already tried it, and she was just trying to find another sucker to suffer through it with her.

A Cornucopia Of Father's Day Goodness

2008-06-15T12:50:00.000-04:00

What an awesome weekend! When you're in school, and working full time, it is amazing what a psychological drag school can be. My current class isn't difficult, but it is ever-present. Friday I took the day off from work and wrote my final paper. The rest of the weekend was correspondingly so much nicer!

On Sunday, I got the royal treatment. Pancakes for breakfast, corned beef for dinner, a canoe trip, and a bike ride with my two favorite ladies. They also picked up the Sports Illustrated Wings\Stanley Cup magazine and the coolest book ever (perhaps).

The Boy Mechanic Makes Toys actually has plans for making a toy steam engine. Yes, it actually uses steam. The book also contains detailed plans for making an ice boat. Not a miniature one, a full sized one. When Evelyn gets just a bit bigger, we are going to have way too much fun with the book.

As if that weren't enough, Aimee made time for me to tinker last night as well. I drilled the 144 holes for one of my new projects, finished a circuit design, and printed the circuit. Twice, actually. While waiting for the printing process to finish I also connected my recently assembled Hobby CNC Driver Board to one of my stepper motors. When I turned on the power, the motor tensed up. It was a shock. Nothing ever works the first time. So I plugged the board into my computer. After rooting about for the right software, I finally dredged it up and tried it out. After some mild swearing I realized that I was pushing the wrong button. The board worked perfectly on one axis, and I suspect the other two will also work just fine.

To top it all off, we even got to bed at a mostly reasonable hour and had time to read. A completely perfect day!

DevTeach 2008, Toronto!

2008-05-13T09:31:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was the first day of DevTeach 08. Actually, it was the pre-conference. The session I did was really great, although it was very long and dense. The instructor had planned an 11 hour session and had to compact it down to only 8 hours.

When I arrived yesterday morning for the session, I came down the escalator to the conference level. There was a great spread of coffee, rolls, donuts, and juice. The first thing I noticed was that everyone hovering around the food tables was wearing a suit. Then I noticed the fellow shooing the hungry geeks away from the table. Apparently there was a law firm conference yesterday. The contrast of processionals made me smile.

It's all about the service

Last evening we had dinner at a nice restaurant. We wouldn't have stopped, except the hostess was outside and she flagged us down to chat with Evelyn. After wandering back and forth a bit, we came back to the restaurant because she was so nice. The hostess and waiter were both saints, which is a good thing because Evelyn was far too tired last night.

Is this good?

2008-04-03T13:13:00.001-04:00

The obvious question is "If your short attention span prevents you from swiping a credit card, should you be driving?"

Maybe if we raised the bar, instead of lowering it, attention spans would be climbing instead of declining. Practice does make perfect, after all.

A Lesson On Fairness

2008-03-24T00:16:00.001-04:00

For the past couple of weeks I've been taking a business writing class. Since the class began, I've been really frustrated. Instructors in the past have spoiled me by returning assignments within a day or two with very complete feedback. This instructor has a different, more ethereal style. This afternoon I received an assignment back and promptly complained about my grade. Worse yet, I actually opened Excel and figured out what the grades for the class must be based on my grade, the number of students, and the class average. Guess what? I probably didn't get the grade I should have.

Guess what else? My perspective is seriously skewed in the wrong direction. As I laid in bed a few moments ago, fuming, something popped into my head. This morning I visited the Easter service at a facility for young people who have made some bad choices, and had run-ins with the law. The pastor looked over the assembly of rough and tumble youngsters and declared "Guess what? Life isn't fair." He's right, of course. Sir Isaac Newton never discovered the "Universal Law of Fairness" because there isn't one.

The chance that I will fail this course is slim. If I manage only 50% on the remaining assignments, I should pass. My current cumulative GPA is 3.95, so one stinker grade won't kill me. I've got a great career, a family, a home, health, and happiness (most of the time).

Meanwhile, I sat amongst 100 or so rightfully angry young men this morning. Men who do not know fairness. They do not have prospects for rewarding careers. Many do not have families, homes, or happiness. Most of them will not attend college at all, let alone twice. Their lot has been unfair, and their prospects don't look good either.

So, about that fairness. Perhaps I'm long overdue for a dose of the unfair. Perhaps I should remind myself that twenty minutes from here there are a couple hundred young men who would gladly trade their version of unfair for mine.

A Missed Opportunity

2008-03-18T12:40:00.001-04:00

Tuesdays I have lunch with a young man at a local school. Since the beginning of the year, we've missed quite a few lunches. Some days he has a difficult time staying in school the entire day. It has been frustrating from time to time to show up at the school, only to find that he just left.

Today I arrived at the school and gave the secretary a quizzical glance. He smiled and told me that my lunch partner was in school. Excellent. I signed in and started trekking up the hall, only to nearly stumble over the gentleman I was en route to visit. He shuffled by and explained that he was going home.

I walked to the office with him, chatted a bit, signed out, and left. At the time, it felt a bit awkward to talk to him in the office with all the hubbub off the office going on. On my way back to the office, I realized that I failed to recognize an opportunity. Instead of leaving, I should have sat in the office and waited. At the very least, it might have cheered my dejected lunch partner a bit. More importantly, he would have realized that my evaluation of him isn't tied directly to his school performance.

Just Say No to Brand Molestation

2008-03-15T15:04:00.001-04:00

When I'm in the mood for a soft drink, I want a Coca-Cola. People who work at chain restaurants are uniformly afflicted with a disease which causes them to ask a silly question sometimes when I request my soft drink of choice. "Pepsi?" No. A Pepsi is not an acceptable substitute for a Coca-Cola. Bring me a water for which I will not pay.

The reason so many restaurants offer only Coke or Pepsi is that these enormous companies have excellent marketing departments. They cut fantastic deals with restaurants, granting them exclusive access. Sometimes...they own the restaurants. Smart, but annoying for consumers. We're basically held hostage, molested, by these huge brands.

FedEx regularly pulls a similar routine on me. Sometimes I order products from companies which suffer from acute idiotitis. The symptoms of this affliction include, among other things, the complete inability to tell the difference between a respectable shipping company and an incredibly shoddy one. FedEx falls in the latter group.

Several years ago, I ordered a lot of products through the mail. FedEx visited my house so often that I signed a slip indicating that I no longer wanted to be bothered signing for deliveries. The reason is quite simple. In order to afford products, I have to work. If I'm working, I can't sit at home on my duff waiting for FedEx to show up so I can write "X" on the signature line.

It worked. For a while. For some reason, FedEx offers a completely counterintuitive, asinine service to shippers. They can request that I have to sign for packages no matter what. Since I'm paying the bill, that makes me really angry. Literally every time someone uses this crappy shipping company, I end up with a signature slip taped to my door. This inevitably adds another day onto the delivery time. Does it make sense that the end consumer can do nothing about this? No, but that's what brand molestation is all about. Taking choice away from the consumers.

Go Brown.

The Hockey Tree

2008-02-24T21:20:00.001-05:00

Ever wanted a tree that could grow really funky smelling hockey gear? Me either. I'd prefer one that grows fresh hockey gear.

The problem with playing hockey is that your gear gets really really nasty. It's expensive, and it doesn't wash up well. I dare you to put a set of shin guards and hockey pants in your washing machine. If you do something really, really silly, like leaving your bag in the car for a couple weeks you can guarantee that it will mold. Unless its winter, in which case you get to wear frozen gear that goes instantly from cold to wet.

Since my wife and I both play, we have a problem. Our gear needs to be dry, but it smells really bad and will probably always smell really bad. We used to strew it around the living room overnight night and put a fan on it. We had to stop when the neighbors across the street started complaining about the smell. Through two sets of closed windows.

We needed a good way to dry our gear without wasting a lot of space. The obvious solution was to buy a rack for hockey gear. I'm too cheap though, so I made a custom hockey tree for about $10 out of 5/8" dowels and a set of 2x4s.

The Extremists

2008-02-24T21:05:00.001-05:00

This is prime stuff.

Permanent Link to Clear your desk of family photos-

What's really great is that the point of the article isn't to tell people to clear their desk of family photos. In fact, the question is posed "how many personal items should a person have in their office". The question wasn't "Will I lose my birthday if my boss sees a picture of my wife on my desk?". As it turns out, the suggestion is that only 1 in 5 objects should be of a personal nature. Once again, why the "Clear you desk..." bit?

I can only assume that it was to drum up readership. Which it did. It worked on me (obviously), and I want my five minutes of life back. What reasonable person has a greater personal item ratio than 1:5? Oh wait...I had a very nice boss who's office was nothing but personal items. Perhaps I'll send the article to him.

Retrospective

2008-02-01T08:55:00.001-05:00

During 2002 I gave some consideration to joining the National Guard. Fortunately for me, it wasn't financially possible. Fortunate not because I did not serve to protect my home, but fortunate because I would probably have been deployed to a middle eastern hornet's nest.

Using the National Guard for a foreign war was a bad idea. I'm sure there are plenty of people like myself who would like to make themselves available for emergencies within the United States, but are unwilling to serve in Iraq. After all, the guard is a perfect tool for providing assistance during natural disasters.

Apparently the war in Iraq is putting such a strain on the National Guard that their supplies and equipment are running low, impeding their ability to even train new troops (http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0201/p02s03-usmi.html). Perhaps it's time to reconsider using our reserves for initiating wars?

What are we paying for?

2008-01-24T20:51:00.001-05:00

More than once, I have claimed that bad things happen when members of our government start getting along. My position has been that we're better off when the government is at a full stalemate. Need proof? Get it from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/24/economic.stimulus/index.html

Now, don't get me wrong...I really like the idea of paying $1200-$1500 less in taxes. Unfortunately, our government really needs that money, and I'm pretty sure that by this time next year...all the recently unemployed people are going to wish that their government benefits could last just a little bit longer.

The idea of forestalling a recession via an economic stimulus package is curious, at best. If we examine how long our interest rates have been at rock bottom, we might get the impression that perhaps this problem has been brewing for quite a while. In fact, I seem to remember a movement toward "patriotic spending" just after 9/11.

The problem is that we've been living on funny money. People cashed out the "equity" in their homes, and spent it. In the post 9/11 days, housing seemed like a safe investment, so people dumped money into it. That inflated prices, thus creating phantom equity that people cashed in for real money that they wasted (for the most part). The major problem is that those same people expected to sell their homes for a profit later on and "upgrade", but of course that can't happen now that prices have adjusted.

So, please explain to me how a one time payment of $1200 per couple is supposed to fix the last 7 years of rampant spending? That wont even make a single mortgage payment for most of our overextended home owners. I'm quite certain that I would appreciate that money much more if it were financing my soup kitchen in say, 11 months.

Know What You Want.

2008-01-17T13:58:00.001-05:00

Last evening when I arrived home, I fairly oozed into my seat at the dinner table. Completely exhausted for no seeming reason. Winters in Michigan can be trying. Due to the ever present cloud cover, the days seem even shorter than they really are, and it's quite cold.

After dinner, my 16 month old daughter waddled up to me and tugged on my pant leg. When I looked down, she raised her arms and said "Up". Never one to disobey a direct order, I complied. Once she was sitting securely on my hip, she had another demand. She turned to the room and said "Bye Bye". It was perfectly clear what she wanted. She wanted to go for a walk. It was cold and dark, and I was feeling sorry for myself...so I distracted her in hopes that she would forget this walk business.

My plan seemed to be working, until we stopped actively playing. She disappeared for a few moments, then reappeared with her boots. She dropped them at my feet and declared "Bye Bye"! So we took our very cold, dark walk. About halfway through, she stopped walking, and stared up at the sky. It was the first time she had really taken notice of the moon, so it turns out that the cold and dark walk was well worth the trouble.

Knowing what you want is the first step to getting what you want. As luck would have it, I had an opportunity to apply the lesson learned last night. After interviewing with a potential employer, the employer declined to offer me the position. There was another opening, though, about which the employer inquired if I had any interest. In light of my recent lesson, I opted to steer clear of the diversion and remain focused on my goals instead.

A Box of Our Own

2007-12-24T20:31:00.001-05:00

I've been working on a lot of electronics projects lately. The new programmer I bought recently is called a Dragon. It comes in a really cool box, but it's a cardboard box. I wanted a better case for it, but something that would still convey "Dragon". To make the box, I bought a wood box such as this one.

Using white glue (Modge Podge glue), a paintbrush, and some really cool, textured red cardstock I covered the box with the paper. The results are really great, although it's difficult to tell in the picture. My wife suggested using the ribbon trim. The inside lip around the box is finished in gold metalic paint, which accentuates the dragon theme.

The dragon box was cool, but there was a new challenge. What to get a 16 year old young man for Christmas. Something positive, cool, and unique. A trip through the Hip-Hop section at Barnes and Noble presented a great opportunity. A book of poems by Tupac Shakur called Rose That Grew from Concrete. Next time you're at the book store, find the book and thumb through it. You may be surprised.

Anyway, what to do about adding a unique twist to this gift? As my wife and I strolled through Michael's, it came to me. What about a custom wooden box to book the book in? Something unique, yet thematically aligned with the book? The result is the box below. It was made just like the one above, but instead of using paper, it is covered with a bandana. There are a couple layers of paper over the wood, then the bandana. Each time the glue dried, a carefully applied utility knife opened it back up. This created very smooth, tight seams between halves of the box.

In this picture, looking down on the box at an angle, you can see how the pattern wraps around the top of the box, and runs down the sides.

On the inside cover of the box, some words of wisdom from Tupac.

The Criers

2007-12-24T00:06:00.001-05:00

It isn't often that we sit down and watch TV, however tonight turned out to be one of the rare occasions we turned on the tube. Since we cannot justify paying for real cable, we have only the cheapest version of analog. In other words, WKAR was the only station worth watching...that we can actually see.

The show was detailing some hearings in congress. The footage from the hearings really shocked me. It was like big time wrestling. The guy asking the questions was loud and belligerent, the guy who was not answering any questions was loud and belligerent, and also, the fans in the bleachers were loud and belligerent.

The people watching these public hearings were holding up signs they made with markers and heckling the person being interviewed. This would be inappropriate at a high school basketball game. Why would it be happening in our capital?

As usually happens, the answer came to me a while later. The signs were too imperfect, the heckling a bit too practiced. I remembered that back in "the day" people had this custom (actually, they probably still do) where a family would hire professional criers to attend the funerals of loved ones. Can't have people thinking that Uncle Louie was unpopular, now can we? Then my "Aha!" light went on. The hecklers in the audience were pros, and they were trying to look like amateurs. No doubt, they worked for lobbyists.

Now I have to question this indictment of our "democratic government". Literally everyone in the hearing was posturing for someone, and each was insincere. They were just giving people such as myself a good show, so as to convince us that everyone is doing their job in Washington.

Yeah, they were all doing a great job. Too bad they were doing the wrong thing, really well. I wonder if they ever got around to finding the truth they were so desperately pretending to search for.

Too many homes?

2007-12-13T10:46:00.001-05:00

A while ago I was lamenting the number of subdivisions that are cropping up. They are everywhere. It seemed as though anyone with a few acres was building a subdivision. At one point I mentioned to someone that it seemed as though the housing market might become saturated with new homes. The person smirked a bit and asked "Do you think people are going to stop having children?"

Well, no, but that doesn't mean the market can support an infinite number of new homes. It appears that the National Association of Home Builders may share my opinion. After the fact. Now if only they would clean up some of the myriad of half finished subdivisions littered about.

Marketing Snafu

2007-11-09T20:57:00.001-05:00

Yahoo! made the mistake of sending me this cute button that says "Yahhooooo" when you press it. It wasn't really a marketing snafu until I noticed the programming header on the bottom of the button...

Eulogy

2007-11-09T20:49:00.001-05:00

Friends, fellow mourners, today we bid a final adieu to Lawnmower. Lawnmower was proud of the work that it did, performing for the past 12 years with only a single oil change. Last season was nearly Lawnmower's last, however it was able to faithfully groom our estate this Summer as well...despite the grass protruding from the cracks around the top of the deck. The final undoing of Lawnmower was not complete deck failure, as we thought it might be. It was not an engine seizure. The final failure was in the mounts for the fuel tank. While we considered repairing it, there still remains the worrisome threat of complete deck failure.

Lawnmower, we wish you well, trimming the gated community in the sky.

Naughty Boy

2007-11-07T08:04:00.001-05:00

This morning, I was a rebel. A punk rocker. Like other punk rockers, driving to work in their Cadillacs, listening to their punk rock on premium satellite radio, commuting to their desk jobs, wearing slacks and sweaters, I was a punk.

The only problem was that I didn't feel very punk. In order to really be a punk one must be angry, one must be a rebel. The I was hit with a stroke of genius! Thanks to the politically correct age we live in, I had the perfect way to express my rebelliousness! I would throw off my shackles of fuel economy! When the next stop light turned green, I let my accelerator foot sink all the way to floor.

The car was stunned. It paused in disbelief. It probably wondered if I had completely lost my composure. I had. After reflecting on the oddity of the moment for a few seconds, the car roared into compliance. Well, it roared as much as a twelve year old family sedan can roar.

As we accelerated, I stared in disbelief at the fuel gauge. It was mobile! My wallet started to ache in my back pocket. All too soon, I reached the speed limit of 35 miles per hour and let my foot slacken. No use in getting a speeding ticket. I'm not that punk.

Busted

2007-10-27T23:04:00.001-04:00

Our daughter is 13 months old now. Her bedroom is attached to our living room, and has a glass door on it. We thought that would make it easy to watch her when she was little. It was. Unfortunately, things have changed.

Evelyn knows a few words. Dog. Cat. Dad. Aimee and I are both in school, so we study. Our desks are in the living room, and mine is visible from Evelyn's crib. A couple of weeks ago she seemed very tired, so we put her in bed for a nap. We waited for the noise from her room to subside, then we crept back to our desks.

My bottom hadn't even touched the seat when I knew I had been thwarted. A cacophony of "Da! Da! Da! Da!" came from the room adjacent the living room. I risked a glance, and sure enough, Evelyn was standing in her crib. Arms over the top, looking right at me. So much for the glass door.

The "Yes" Man

2007-10-24T16:11:00.001-04:00

A while ago, I worked for my brother. It was a tremendous learning experience. We built a business to business web site. It was a really great product, but it came out just about the time the DotCom bubble burst. Looking at the program now, I'm still impressed with how well it turned out. It is still the most functional and useful piece of browser based software that I have ever seen.

It used to be that Alan would tell me what he wanted changed about our program, and I would balk. My too frequent refrain was "Can't do it." Alan would have none of my realistic, logical nonsense. "Yes you can", he'd correct me, "and you'll need to finish this change and one more this afternoon." Sometimes, of course, the schedule had to shift a bit...but the change always happened per his specifications. Always.

Many of us try to bend our business model to fit technology, but Alan was the other way around. He bent technology around the business. That's the way it's supposed to work. Technology changes a lot faster than stable business models.

At work today, I miss having my brother sit on the other side of the room, making outlandish requests and throwing the occasional missile at me. When we work with people who know precisely what they want, and will accept nothing else, they inspire us to do better work than we thought possible. Even in the absence of my old boss, mentor, and brother I try to keep him in mind when I get technology requests. If my memory is working well, I catch the "can't" before it gets out of my mouth and replace it with "Sure, we can do that."

Cloaking Device

2007-10-16T07:55:00.001-04:00

When my wife and I bought a second car, I wanted something large enough to pull a trailer, yet economical enough for daily driving. The solution was a Cadillac Sedan Deville. Ours is a '95. It comfortably seats a family of 10 and gets 26 MPG on the freeway and about 22.5MPG for my daily commuting. Not bad, considering the 4.9 liter V-8 shoehorned under the hood...sideways.

Recently I completed work on my new invention: a cloaking device. The Cadillac was the obvious choice for testing my new invention, so I installed it yesterday. During my morning commute today, its functionality was evidenced by the other drivers' complete ignorance of my presence on the road.

You may be skeptical. Perhaps they just didn't see me, you may be thinking to yourself. The SS Deville takes up an entire lane, leaving only inches on either side. The rear turn signals are literally over a foot high, and they are augmented by front turning lamps. A turning lamp, by the way, is a headlight aimed out the side of your car. It illuminates the lane next to you, and all the houses within 1/4 mile of the road. Give or take 10 feet.

The cloaking device clearly works because despite its size, and copious use of turn signals, the SS Deville remained completely undetected this morning. Nobody noticed the spectacle of illumination during lane changes. Every other driver overlooked our lane filling presence. It would have been a serene drive if it weren't for the confusion caused to other drivers when my car magically appeared in another lane, despite having been previously invisible.

Latitude

2007-10-12T08:40:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I popped into my new bank to make a deposit. I handed the money and my driver's license the teller. She blinked at me. "I need to make a deposit" I explained. The poor woman looked stricken.

"You need a deposit slip to make a deposit." I could swear she was smirking at me. Unfortunately I didn't know my account number. This had never happened at my other bank. After much haggling I extracted my account number and a blank slip from her, which she insisted that I complete myself at the counter. Why was a deposit slip such a necessity? She couldn't explain it, other than to tell me the computer required the slip. The look on her face told me that she wasn't inclined to explain anything to me without just cause. By the way, her name was "Joy". That's an irony.

With the installation of the first computer used by bank tellers began the demise of customer service. No longer was a person faced with the prospect of telling a customer "I don't want to help you." Instead, a person could simply declare "The computer won't let me!" The much maligned computer began its trek as a customer service scapegoat.

Now that we have computers everywhere, customer service suffers accordingly. Programmers such as myself typically write programs in a way that makes it difficult (preferably impossible) for people to enter data or complete operations that we don't like. Sure, situations may warrant a personal touch , but we have made the assumption that the person using the computer doesn't know their job as well as we do. We're saving them from their own mistakes. I can't imagine why people claim that programmers have poor communications skills.

This idea has been taken to such an extreme that we have millions of workers who are not allowed to make decisions. They are not allowed to use their own judgment. The don't have the latitude to solve problems, because our society is afraid they might make the wrong decision. And they would, once in a while.

Empowerment happens when we begin to trust people to understand their own jobs, and make the right decisions. Empowerment improves customer service because the employee has the latitude to do the right thing.

I was saddened about the recent death of a woman in the Phoenix airport. Disclaimer: Carol Ann Gotbaum should have been escorted by a family member.

She was approximately one minute late for boarding her flight, and they wouldn't let her on. Supposedly she wasn't allowed to trade flights with another passenger for "security reasons". What if someone had taken the time to realize that she had an emergency? What if that person had been willing and able to help her? Make no mistake about it. An airport is an awful, lonely, terrifying place to be left. Especially for someone en route to a substance abuse treatment facility.

It isn't good enough not to help each other. This craziness has to stop. Let's give our employees the latitude to do the right thing, and let's start expecting people to do more than perform the bare minimum to keep their jobs. A simple smile and exchange of pleasantries can go a very long way. I think it would have done an immeasurable amount of good for Ms. Gotbaum.

Update: I just checked my RSS feeds, and Seth Godin seems to be on a similar page today.

Ah, Sweet Mostlysuccess!

2007-10-10T14:38:00.001-04:00

A good friend and I have had a long standing "contest" to see who could build a small robot to navigate a path first. Now, my cohort could have beaten me to the punch on this any time he wished. His technical expertise is far beyond my own. He hasn't, though, and this has been a great opportunity (several years in the making) for me to learn about embedded electronics. After all this time, I am pleased to announce the completion of a very imperfect path navigating robot.

The tracking algorithm is very simple. The robot travels forward until it gets close to a barrier, then it "looks" around to find the best direction to turn. It can choose to turn 45 degrees either direction, however I biased the code for 90 degree turns. If the 45 is truly the best path, it can be utilized.

The bot appears a bit epileptic. This is because it has a tendency to track ever so slightly to the left. Every few clock cycles I have it track back the other direction.

This view shows the front of the 'bot. I love the Sharp IR sensors. They make it look like Johnny 5.

In the picture below, you can just make out the circuit board. The two cables to the left are for programming and serial communications.

Like other, similar projects, this one uses two servos to move the bot forward. They have been modified to turn continuously instead of moving to specific angles.

The video below shows the bot navigating a path.

There are a whole slew of improvements I could make. The bot really should have four stationary sensors to help it track a straight line. This would help eliminate the stutter when it moves. Also, the Sharp IR sensors are bad in two ways. First, their range is only good for about 3 ft. Even that is questionable, and if an object gets too close, the sensor reports that it's farther away. That could be a problem.

There is also a lack of electrical power on the machine. It could really benefit from using a rechargeable battery pack.

The Equalizer

2007-10-06T22:04:00.001-04:00

Last night as I sat on the couch, I couldn't help but to admire my quadriceps. Sure, they're not so large any more, but they are still quite defined. Inside, I smiled smugly.

O' treacherous conceit.

This afternoon my brother's father-in-law sent me an email asking if I would be interested in joining him for a ride. I haven't been road riding much lately, and I have never had an opportunity to join a veteran cyclist for a road ride. In my haste to check the pressure in my tires and fill my water bottle, I almost forgot to call Ted back.

About 4 o'clock he called and said he'd be at my house in about 15 minutes. I raced outside, buckled my helmet, and starting warming my legs up. After a short eternity, Ted arrived.

The first mile was pretty easy. Despite my complete lack of physical discipline over the last year, my legs are still in relatively good shape. My cardiovascular system is another story. After the first couple of miles I started breathing heavy. Ted was still able to converse as though we were sitting still. After 5 miles I was seriously out of gas. Remember, though, Ted invited me along on his ride. I tried not to show it, but my speed kept dropping and my gasping kept increasing. My speech became a wheezing, gasping gurgle.

After another couple of miles, Ted offered that I might want to take a cutoff instead of riding the rest of the loop. I didn't even try to put up a facade. I just gurgled, waved, and turned. Immediately prior to turning, I had been having chills. Did I mention that is was 86 degrees today?

Once I turned away and left Ted to enjoy the remainder of his ride, I coasted. Sweet relief. After about six hours, I finally got back home. At least it felt that way...having ridden half way across Michigan. Aimee was encouraging: "I'm surprised you're back already!". I checked my watch. It had only been a bit over an hour.

Warming myself in a hot shower, I reflected upon how atrophied my legs looked from my lack of exercise.

Sometimes We Need Emergencies

2007-09-27T09:56:00.001-04:00

You may have heard of a perfectly awful situation called "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy". In these situations a parent will insist that their child is ill, and even fabricate or induce symptoms in the child. If you've seen The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen, you may recognize the similarities. In the story the Baron spends a lot of time not helping people. If he fixed problems before they were problems, he wouldn't be much of a hero. Heroes fix big problems, not little ones.

Many of us see and try to fix problems every day, but we are often stymied by people who do not perceive the same level of emergency. If we repeatedly try to impart our urgency, eventually we'll usually get tuned out. Perhaps the Baron had a better approach. Fabricate the solution, and wait for an emergency to arise. Then people will be ready to listen.

Chunking and Self-Discovery

2007-09-24T12:17:00.001-04:00

When people mentioned trying to "find themselves", I always wondered what they meant. How does one "find" their "self". Over time I realized that the definition of this discovery probably changes from one person to the next. My own definition is to "know ones-self and understand what one can reasonably expect from themselves." For example, I know that I have a difficult time letting a problem go unsolved. I can expect myself to battle with keeping appointments if it means I have to stop working on a problem.

You may have heard of "chunking" in the psychological sense. If you haven't, it is the act of dissecting an experience and filing away the important parts. Your brain does this for you because it would be silly to remember every minute detail of every experience. At one time or another you probably had a difficult time trying to remember something. This is because it was not important. Not to your brain, at least. Perhaps you are thinking "But, it was really important."

No it wasn't. Not to the "real" you. If you examine what you do and don't remember, I suspect you'll find out all kinds of things about what's really important to you.

Strange Bedfellows

2007-09-19T08:15:00.001-04:00

You've surely heard of the scandal surrounding Senator Craig. While he should certainly have known better than to plead guilty to any charges, I'm not entirely convinced that the police were acting ethically. In fact, they might have been acting illegally.

My idea of political nirvana is a virtual stalemate. Most of the laws we need are already on the books, and the really important ones will still get passed. The rest are simply a waste of time and complication of the law. One of the great tools for maintaining that stalemate, and exposing the absurdity propagated by our government is the legal system. My conservative friends usually shame me for cheering on the ACLU, but who better to stall legislation and inspect the interpretation of the law?

You can imagine my surprise, and mirth at the idea of the ACLU defending Senator Craig.

The Great Coffee Scam

2007-09-19T08:00:00.001-04:00

At our office, we've got these huge coffee machines. One on each floor. These monsters have three burners, brew a pot of coffee in under a minute, and can burn an entire pot of coffee in less than 1/2 hour. Not coincidentally, the stuff is so hot that it's undrinkable until it cools for several minutes.

On the first floor we've started using air pots. The coffee stays at a pleasant temperature without burning for hours. Why would anyone make a coffee machine that burns coffee so efficiently? Maybe it's because we were silly enough to get our machines from the same company that supplies our coffee? After all, the only cure for a burnt pot of coffee is to brew a fresh one.

Vindication

2007-09-17T12:14:00.001-04:00

In a recent post I complained about the state of social security, comparing it to a Ponzi scheme. In a recent interview with CNN Money, Alan Greenspan appears to agree on the urgency of the situation:

What should we be worried about most right now in terms of the economy?
Strangely enough, I think it's politics. We have a dysfunctional political system in the sense that there are very serious fiscal problems out there, most importantly Medicare. As best I can judge, when the baby boom retires, we are going to have to either raise taxes very sharply or cut benefits by half. No politician wants to confront this. And this is a very sad event because what's at stake here is the fiscal stability of the American government.

Pass it On

2007-09-14T08:09:00.001-04:00

You might have seen the billboard featuring Christopher Reeve, with the caption "Super Man" on it. This billboard has several brothers along our freeways, inspiring virtue in passing drivers. One day, I became curious what good soul was sponsoring these billboards. As it turns out, they are the product of the Foundation for a Better Life. Interestingly enough, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America notes the fifth stage of the "Pass it On Campaign" on their Public Service Campaigns page.

This morning, another billboard caught my eye. It told me that "Save your money, and one day it will return the favor". The advertisement was sponsored by FeedThePig.Org. "Boy, that's good advice, " I thought to myself, "people really don't save enough money. Who would sponsor such good advice?" The answer came to me quickly enough. Banks. As it turns out, I was close. The sponsor is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. When I realized that this good advice was probably paid for by someone who would benefit from it, I was irritated.

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America certainly cannot fill all its billboards, all the time. As a result it can donate billboard space to charitable foundations, like the Foundation for a Better Life. This donation becomes tax deductible, thus recouping some of the expense of an otherwise unoccupied billboard. Similarly the AICPA can drum up more business for itself, and get a tax deduction at the same time by creating the Feed the Pig organization.

Does a dual purpose behind a message negate the meaning? Yes. Should it? Probably not necessarily. The Foundation for a Better Life has certainly made my commutes, and those of others more pleasant. The foundation may actually have inspired a few "random acts of kindness" here and there. A nice use of an otherwise obnoxious billboard space. Does Feed the Pig offer good, or bad advice? Well...it's good advice, espousing the virtues of sound fiscal management.

Now I'm left wondering how I became such a cynic that my first priority when I encounter a charity is to discover who benefits from it. That isn't bad either, though, because we should be aware of who may be manipulating us. Now that I know, I still enjoy both sets of billboards while I commute.

National Ponzi Scheme

2007-09-07T08:08:00.001-04:00

As I read through the news this morning, I came across the term "Ponzi Scheme". I've never looked up the definition, so I figured now would be a good time to do just that. It turns out that a Ponzi scheme is a rouse destined to fail. "Investors" are promised enormous "returns" on their investments, which they get because they are paid by other "investors" money.

Sound familiar? In case your primary residence is under a rock, let me tell you something awful. Social Security is a revolving door. Money paid in by people today isn't put into a special account. It is paid right back out as a benefit to someone already using the system. The system works really well as long as the number of workers in the country always increases. If the number of workers decreases enough, and the number of people using the benefits increases enough then the system will collapse. As a matter of fact you may already have heard that people are having fewer children, and living longer.

As with so many other ideas, someone else has thought the same thing. Check with the All Seeing Eye. I'm pretty sure we should treat this like other Ponzi schemes. Shut it down and throw someone in prison.

Store Credit

2007-08-30T12:43:00.001-04:00

This CNN article details Toys R Us' recall of crayon and paint sets due to excessive levels of lead. Again, straight from China. What caught my eye was this bit from the article:

The CPSC said that no injuries were reported but advised that consumers should stop using the product immediately and take the products away from children and return the item to the nearest Toys "R" Us store for store credit.

Let me try to get something straight here. I'm a little slow due to the Chinese lead popsicles I've been enjoying recently. Toys R Us is poisoning the children that people buy things for, and they won't even issue a refund so the consumer can buy products from another outlet? Shameless.

What I find interesting is that had these products been made in the United States, the factory and the product would likely have been tested for lead regularly. We don't even trade property with lead in it. Do we simply not test imported products for contaminants?

Perhaps I used the wrong approach for manufacturing my Mercury Slushy product. Next time I'll farm the work out to China; at least that will keep those nosy U.S. government regulators off my tail.