what do you do for a living?

When you meet someone new there are a few questions that always seem to come up.

Are you from this area? Do you have hobbies? Do you have kids? What do you think about this weather? Do you like any professional sports teams? And the big one is what do you do for a living?

This is probably the aspect of my job I like the least. There is no good answer that is descriptive as I want it to be. Here are some examples of how people in other jobs get to answer that question.

Person 1: What do you do for a living?
Person 2: Architect.
Person 1: Cool, so what have you designed?

Person 1: What do you do for a living?
Person 2: I deliver pizza for Little Caesar's.
Person 1: Pizza, Pizza!
Person 2: That's funny. I've never heard that before.

Person 1: What do you do for a living?
Person 2: I'm a doctor.
Person 1: What a coincidence. I have this disgusting growth on my back that I have been meaning to get checked out, and...

Person 1: What do you do for a living?
Person 2: Author.
Person 1: What have you written that I would have read?
Person 2: Nothing. I don't write material for the back of breakfast cereal boxes.

Notice how everyone hearing about the careers mentioned above understood what the person does? Now here is how the typical conversation goes when I am involved.

Person 1: What do you do for a living?
Me: I support developers and administrators who use the software that the company I work for creates.
Person 1: Huh?
Me: I work with computers.
Person 1: Oh, like the people at the PC shop on the corner?
Me: No, I help people with software problems.
Person 1: So you work for a helpdesk?
Me: Not really. I don't work with end users. I support advanced users.
Person 1: I'm an advanced user, and I call the helpdesk all the time.
Me: Do you like any professional sports teams?

jack

Golden and I have been watching Lost quite a bit lately and something has stuck out to both of us. I am like Jack, who is one of the main characters. This actually isn't one of those posts where I go on and on about how great people like me are. The reason is that neither of us noticed the similarities at the beginning of the series when Jack was a nearly perfect character. Once they started pointing to his flaws the similarities started.

• Jack has very cold view of the world. If there is a 1% chance of something good happening, it is about the same as if there is a 0% chance of something good happening.
• If someone expresses a belief that there is something supernatural about the island and has evidence for that belief, Jack writes them off as mentally unbalanced.
• Jack doesn't like to take on full responsibility for operations but does take it on because there seems no other choice. He appears to resent full responsibility.
• Jack is constantly torn between the popular choice and the right choice. He eventually makes the right choice, but not as easily as he should have.

I could go on, but why would I want to.

noah, esther, and goldilocks

We touched on a topic in Sunday School yesterday that I have been considering writing about for a while. I figured I would take the opportunity and write a post on it.

Why is it that so much of what is in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is only relayed on the level of a childrens' story? Furthermore, why are those stories that don't fit so well into kids' lessons canned pretty quickly?

I dislike this for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that it gives people the impression that the beliefs behind Christianity are fairy tales in their very nature. The whole thing starts to become this sanitized idealistic world that could never in a million years be real because it fits better in a storybook. The idealized world that is portrayed couldn't be real if we wanted it to be. Here are some examples.

Noah is a prime example and was mentioned in the book that we are studying. Should a story containing such destruction of life be considered a kids' story?

The story of Esther is always told as a story of beauty and courage. It is indeed a story of beauty and courage. Let us not forget that the second chapter in Esther makes it clear that she joined a harem and pleased the king in that role. This is how the Bible implies God used Esther, though God is never actually mentioned in the book. Again, the unedited version is not a story for the kiddies.

How about David? This was a man who did right in God's eyes but that does not mean that he was the kind of man that I would have wanted to be associated with. Even ignoring the events with Bathsheba, David oversaw the deaths of many and was not incredibly progressive in his views toward women. His redeeming quality was simply that he understood and accepted humility.

I do think it would be unwise to go to the opposite extreme and say that the purpose of the Old Testament is to magnify sex, violence, deception, et al. There is no denying that nearly every story from the Old Testament shows the humanness of man in adult terms, though.

In class I was asked what I thought the purpose of the stories in the Old Testament was if it wasn't to be a simple childrens' storybook. Given what I know from the New Testament I believe that the purpose of the Old is to point either to Christ or at least the need for Christ. What other purpose could there be?

gridlock

I am a creature of habit and schedule. If anything messes up that habit or schedule I am not always the quickest to adapt.

My trek to the office every morning takes me through a half mile of residential areas, past a school, south on an expressway for about four or five miles, then through a suburban business district for about a half mile. The last half mile is always longer than the rest of the steps of the trip combined. Lately, it has been even worse, though.

It is bad enough that two extra lights have been added in that last half mile and that neither is timed so that I can skip past them on green. It is also bad enough that there has been significant construction going on for the better part of a year so as to add extra clutter onto an already busy section of road.

The final straw for me was half of the exit ramp off the highway onto this road was recently coned off. I assume that there will be construction on the ramp, but last I saw there were only the cones and the blocked off lanes looked usable otherwise. It took me two days worth of sitting in twenty minutes of traffic to get through one light to figure out that I should drive a back route to the office until the ramp is fully functional again.

The picture here is from the traffic jam that was caused by the blocked ramp lanes from after I got off work, so it is going the opposite direction that I am.

There does seem to be a lot of road construction as of late in the Overland Park area. It is probably better this way, since nicer roads mean fewer potholes and other inconveniences that can damage my car. I just wish it wouldn't cause such significant delays on my way to work.

coldplay

Coldplay is one of those bands that exists in that world between groups I love and groups I can't stand. I can enjoy their music, but I won't go out of my way to listen to them. So when Forrest asked if I wanted to go to a Coldplay concert my natural reaction was, "That's too expensive!" because I am such a tightwad. Eventually Forrest got desperate and the price for the spare ticket he had gone down, so I agreed to go.

It's a long story how the tickets worked out like this, but the spare was a single away from the other seats that Forrest had purchased. As a result I watched and listened to Coldplay alone, or as alone as I could be with several thousand people crowded around me.

Some things of note that happened.

• BB agreed to drive me there, so the entire Achtung family plus me crammed into his Matrix and went to the baby sitter's to drop off the kids. I appreciate very much the patience it took to allow for one more body in the car.
• When I walked into the park I was asked if I wanted to donate to some cause. I quickly reacted, "No," but I felt like a jerk for saying that because the reason wasn't that I didn't have much cash on me. It wasn't that I didn't want to contribute to some worthy cause.
• I was also asked to sign a petition. I didn't for two reasons. First, I already get enough spam, and they wanted my email address. Second, people trying to get you to sign a petition rarely have more information about the cause other than the sales pitch they have been taught. I wanted to be sure I understood the issue before signing my name.
• When I went to my seat there was hardly anyone near it. There were two girls sitting in the two seats directly to the right of my seat, though. I felt it too awkward to sit right next to them while all the other seats in the area were empty, so for the entire opening act I sat in someone else's seat who hadn't shown up yet.
• It was incredibly warm for the first night in autumn.
• I thought about bringing a camera, but decided against it because I thought I might get stopped at the gate and have to take it back to the car. Midway through the concert, the lettering on the screen behind the band informed people that they should take pictures now.
• I had a hard time getting a Sprint PCS signal inside Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. I'm sure that wasn't intentional.
• BB ran into a client in the entryway of the amphitheater. Does he run into someone he knows everywhere he goes?
• Forrest came over to talk to me during the exceedingly long intermission. The person behind me recognized him and attempted to monopolize the conversation. Does he run into someone he knows everywhere he goes?
• I found out that I am simply not aggressive in crowds. I was passed by countless people as I tried to work my way out of the amphitheater after the concert. I don't have what it takes to elbow and cut people off to move forward quickly.

If you care about the musical aspect of the concert Forrest and BB can give you more cogent thoughts. I enjoyed it, but I have little more to say than that.

chivalry or chauvinism

There was a debate recently at my office as to whether doing things like opening the door for a woman was a sexist activity. This was not a debate that I entered into, so it is not my intent to present a defense of one of the positions on the matter. I don't really fully understand the positions on the matter anyway. It is rather my intent to issue the complaint that I don't feel I am given the privilege of avoiding taking sides on the issue. Almost every day I will be presented with a situation where I have to make the decision as to whether to hold open the door for someone.

My concern with the whole situation is not whether the activity is sexist. That is tied up in whatever the motivations of the person holding the door open are, and I am quite sure my motivations in that regard are never sexist. I am concerned, however, that some person at some time will make a judgment about me based upon whether I decide to hold the door open for her (or him). Apparently, this will eventually occur regardless as to whether I decide to hold doors open for people or let them slam shut in their faces.

Why must it be that everything I can possibly do will either prove sexism or a lack of chivalry? Why must everything have a hidden meaning? Why can't we just install automatic doors everywhere?

did something die in here?

Last week at work I was visiting the loo, as the British call it, when I noticed a funky smell. This was nothing new in a bathroom, and it stuck out anyway. I could tell that someone had visited the facilities recently, though that person was no longer in the bathroom. I held my breath, sped up the process a little, and then left the bathroom.

On the way out I ran into a coworker and said hi. As he closed the door behind him I remembered the smell and that the evidence pointed to the likelihood that I had left it. I sat in my cube for the next five minutes slightly embarrassed about the turn of events. At the very first possibility I tracked him down and pointed out that I was not the originator of the offending smell.

This got me thinking. Why would I care? It isn't like anyone is able to never create a smell in the bathroom. It is just that this is something I would prefer others not to tack onto their knowledge about me. As an example, the things I know about Dust:

• Dark hair
• Kind of geeky
• Uptight personality
• Don't want to walk into the bathroom after him

I wish to keep at least the last item off that list.

the weekend edition

So, another weekend is almost over and I still haven't posted something. This is getting a little ridiculous. I used to be so good about coming up with a doable topic for the weekend, but the past lack of readership over the weekend makes me think twice about wasting a good topic on Saturday or Sunday.

To distract you from the fact that this post has no topic I present a picture I took of a sign for sale at Old Settlers Days last weekend. It has no real irony or intrigue in relation to this site other than that it includes part of my "name."

a positive vibe

To offset some negative posts, the following are things that make me happy:

• Laughing with Golden
• Lists
• Seeing Forrest step on my soapboxes in class
• References to the happy crack in my basement
• Well-written satire
• When Golden gives me acts of service
• Staying up late on a Friday
• Sleeping in on a Saturday
• A good Chipotle steak fajita
• Winning in a game that requires skill
• A blanket, a recliner, and a remote control
• Passing someone who is driving slowly in the fast lane
• Working through a brainteaser
• Learning how people think
• A comfortable pair of jeans and a cotton tee
• 80-degree weather
• Being compared to a fictional gay man
• Truth
• Cynical humor
• A visit to a bookstore or the library
• Letting go of responsibilities
• "Inspirational" Posters like the one pictured below from Despair.com that exactly describe my feelings
• Completing things

a negative vibe

I am currently stuck in a catch-22. I don't want to come across as all negative on this site, but I personally think most interesting writing is negative. At the least, most humorous writing is negative. I have said this earlier but it bears repeating; people are generally funnier when they are pessimistic. So what do I do?

I have written posts that were not negative, but they are always the ones that simply relay information without any attempt at humor or any form of hyperbole or even intellectual insight. Writing something without humor or insight is fine for a lot of situations, but usually for me that leaves factual telling of a story (which I have done) or a touchy feely post (which I will probably never do).

I keep asking myself whether it is all that bad that I want to post as a pessimist. I still don't have an answer. Knowing me, I probably never will.

guilty

I had an epiphany yesterday. We were discussing a sense of guilt in Sunday School when someone in class noted that his first real experience with feeling guilt was when he was thirteen. Thirteen! This stuck out to me as weird, but what got me thinking was the fact that this was in response to a story about someone else who also had their first experience with serious guilt at age thirteen. My epiphany was that maybe what I assumed to be a normal level of guilt was actually wrong.

I cannot remember a first experience with feeling serious guilt about something that I had done, because I can't remember a time when I haven't had a healthy sense of guilt. I don't know for sure why I have such a well-developed sense of guilt. I assume it comes from a combination of genetics and environment, but what doesn't?

From the time I was very young I always marveled at those who could do things without much concern that I would have felt very guilty about. I guess I always knew on a subconscious level that the person probably didn't really feel guilt, but I never really could understand how the person didn't feel guilty. Didn't that person feel that their actions had consequences? Is this something that I was taught that others were not?

I think what concerns me the most is that I don't want to condemn my (long in the) future kids to having to deal with serious guilt issues, but at the same time I know my strong conscience kept me out of things that caused others to stumble. A parent must instill a sense of guilt in his or her child for the child to properly develop, I am sure, but how to strike the right balance. If I screwed that up, I'd feel so guilty.

by its cover

Last night I caught the tail end of a discussion at church between Forrest and someone else in the church. What I caught was Forrest describing the book that he is going to teach in Sunday this quarter called Blue Like Jazz. At this point I have not read the book, but I am definitely interested in reading it and learning from it after hearing Forrest's description.

The conversation, however, was not started as a discussion of the merits of the book topic, but as a question of why a Sunday School class would be taught out of a book that did not have an overtly Christian name. I don't need to belabor my feelings about judging things based on whether they appear Christian, but if I didn't this post would end right here.

silver dollar city: my version

Since everybody else is putting up multi-picture posts, I guess this is one more bridge I'll jump off. I got a little camera-happy this weekend, probably to the chagrin of those around me.

When we went to visit Golden's family for Labor Day and to celebrate her Dad's birthday, the decision was made to go to Silver Dollar City. We weren't really skipping church, because we went to the Wilderness Church at the park. Interestingly enough a lot of people came up with the idea to visit the park on that exact same day. I don't know exactly how many people were there this weekend, but it certainly seemed like a lot.

There are a few rides that I was interested in going on, one of which was the Powder Keg. This is a new ride and apparently goes from zero to some high mph value almost immediately, thus creating a powder keg affect. When we got to the line for the ride, though, we saw that it was rather long. No one in the group, including me, thought that it would be worth the wait. Later, there was talk of mechanical difficulties with the ride. It was probably best that we didn't get on that ride.

We were able to do other things besides the Powder Keg, though, including the Wild Fire. In my opinion an amusement park really isn't much of a park unless it has a good classic steel coaster, so Wild Fire makes Silver Dollar City worth a visit.

We also went on a few other coaster rides like Fire in the Hole and Thunderation. Both are fine, but really aren't incredibly exciting. Golden enjoys quoting some recordings that riders hear because those recordings are the same as when she rode it as a kid, but I didn't have the same memories to draw from.

One tradition that Golden's family follows almost every time they go to Silver Dollar City is to eat lunch at The Mine restaurant. It is a buffet place that is build to give you the impression that you are actually in a mine. The plates and cups are metal and utilitarian and the tables and chairs are very simplistic wood creations. The lighting is from lamps hung on the walls and there is even an interior pond that runs through a small waterwheel to give the impression--well, I am not completely certain the impression that it is supposed to give.

There is also a table that is rigged to rise slowly when a switch is thrown and confuse the people eating there. This was the first time that I have seen people eat at that table and not have the table rise on them. The waitress seemed a little busy, so maybe no one had time to flip the switch.

One of the things that Golden had decided she wanted do to was get kettle corn from Silver Dollar City. We saw a stand for kettle corn but decided we would wait until later to pick some up nearer to the entrance to the park. Once we got to where we thought kettle corn could be bought around the gate to the park, we found out that the kettle corn stand was no more. Golden's Dad volunteered to go back across the park and get the sought after corn. I volunteered to tag along. The corn was good, but I am still not sure it was worth all the exercise.

I asked Golden if the park was everything she wanted it to be. She commented that it was. I then asked if we were set for another five years. Apparently we will be going to Silver Dollar City again some time before five years is up.

one zero zero

This is my one hundredth post, and so I thought I needed to make it special and unique. I have been really concerned about inadvertantly repeating myself as I have gotten more and more of a history of posts behind me.

I thought about posting about the weird dream I had last night. In it, Felicity and Batman were arguing over the pronounciation of the word "potato" and a Chucky doll was arbitrating. God wouldn't get involved because Batman has a tattoo. The issue was eventually settled in a sand volleyball match in South Carolina when Felicity couldn't stand the temperature of the sand from the heat of the day.

I didn't figure that story was as good as the last time I mowed the yard, though. I had to go over it four times on account of my OCD, but I didn't mind that much because I was wearing comfortable jeans that fit my butt just right. Golden thought I looked like Kip after all that mowing and I was worked up enough to kill a boar.

Perhaps the best story was from a girl movie, or was it The Pianist? Anyway, this guy's worlds are colliding because his girlfriend becomes friends with his poker buddies and gives away his poker tell. Any time he is bluffing his car alarm goes off. I determined that I probably shouldn't relay that story, though, because it is probably copyrighted.

I guess I'll just have to be optimistic and come up with something off the cuff. Even at 26 I gotta start sometime.

ironic

It's like rain on your wedding day

It's a free ride when you've already paid

It's the good advice that you just didn't take

Who would've thought...it figures

The assertion has been raised in my office recently that the song Ironic doesn't really talk about anything that is ironic. I haven't come to any solid conclusion myself, but it was something to think about.

There is one thing that has happened to me, though, that I think is ironic. I took my sister to the airport this morning and so needed to plan out the trip from the house to the airport then to work. Typically, the quickest trip would be to take 635 around the west side of the city then drive up 29 to the airport. This makes for almost a direct drive from my house and is maybe 25-30 minutes. I was planning this in my head until I remembered that the 635 bridge over the Missouri river is shut down, so I would need to take an alternate route that would add about ten minutes to the trip one way (which is significant in the morning). That wasn't what was ironic, though.

As I was talking with my sister about something Golden came in and noted that she just heard that the 635 bridge was going to open the next day, but it would only open in the afternoon rather than in the morning. That was about as close to useful as the completion to the construction project could be without actually being useful. Isn't it ironic?