back in business

I am currently sitting in the Hampton Inn in Terre Haute, Indiana, sipping decaf and catching up on stuff I missed for a week. Golden and I should be back home sometime tomorrow evening. It is always possible that the weather could affect those plans, but it looks like we're going to be in the hotel while the bulk of the bad weather passes us by.

We are both pretty exhausted and she is actually considering going to bed hours before the switchover to 2007 because she doesn't think that she can stay up that long. I don't think I will go to bed before midnight any New Year's Eve for at least another fifty years.

I'm considering switching my posting pattern this upcoming week to work around New Year's Day, so it will probably be Tuesday before I post again. The next week will be observations I made over the holiday. I think I like doing that after a break, so everyone will just need to get used to it, I guess.

Speaking of daily routines, this whole being away from home for over a week has messed up my mental scheduled routines. I forgot completely that this is a Saturday evening until a couple of minutes ago because weekdays and weekends have somewhat lost their meaning in the last 10 days. I like that because part of the point of a major holiday to me is to forget about routine life for a bit, but that makes it a little harder to get back in my routines when the holiday is over.

holiday plans

Golden, NJ, and I will be headed to her parents' house tonight, then to visit my family in western Pennsylvania this weekend. As a result, we may or may not be checking blogs over the next week and a half. We'll see how things go.

In the meantime I leave you with the top ten news stories of the past year.

10. Mel Gibson goes on a drunk tirade against Palestinians in a failed attempt to reconcile with the Jewish community.

9. Responding to complaints that the steps taken to block a United Arab Emirates company's attempted takeover of U.S. ports was racist, several lawmakers point out that they, "have several United Arab Emirate friends."

8. The organizers of the Winter Olympics hire Simon Cowell to help judge the ice dancing contests in hopes of winning over some of the American Idol crowd.

7. Democrats win back both the House and Senate from Republicans on a platform of eliminating corruption. In order to make good on this promise, however, they are forced to completely disband both institutions.

6. Millions of people become emotionally involved with Suri Cruise. An entire 0.02% of them will have an actual valid reason to be emotionally involved at some point in their lives.

5. President Bush advocates moving 100,000,000 troops to Iraq by June, 2007. Democrats counter that no troops are needed and control should be handed over to Al Qaeda because it is better equipped to deal with the situation on the ground.

4. The Pope offends many in the Muslim world when he asserts that Catholicism has developed way cooler mandatory attire than those who practice Islam could ever dream of.

3. Exporting horse meat is outlawed in the United States due to public disgust over the practice of eating the meat. Exporting cow, chicken, rabbit, duck, pheasant, turkey, moose, deer, bear, rattlesnake, pig, and gopher meat is still legal--for now.

2. A student forces a lockdown in Chicago Midway Airport when she is caught smuggling a bottle of Aquafina through a TSA security checkpoint. She will be eligible for parole in 2023.

1. Britney Spears becomes the first person in history whose life actually goes downhill after leaving Kevin Federline.

that's a wrap

I have started wrapping presents for Christmas. This is honestly something I don't understand. We spend money and considerable time to put a gift in a wrapper that will be ripped up in a few short seconds. My love language is not gifts, so maybe that's why I don't understand, but the following are a few of the points I have trouble with.

Cost: Why does so much gift wrap cost so much. I know you can get some at a dollar store, but since when does the paper a gift is wrapped in matter as much as the gift?

Gift bags are nice in that most of my gripes below aren't an issue with the bags. They cost more than gift wrap, though, so I always have to take this into account.

Ribbons and Bows: I kind of feel bad mentioning this, but I really could care less whether there is a bow on my gift. I assume that a bow or a ribbon makes a gift more appealing to some people. Probably people who have better aesthetic taste than I do. It doesn't change the fact that the bow simply doesn't do anything for me.

Cutting and Folding: In my opinion the main point of the paper is to hide what the actual gift is from the recipient. Making precise cuts and folds in the wrapping paper is irrelevant to this point.

Tape: Did you know that you're only supposed to use three pieces of tape on a typical rectangular gift? If you use more you're not doing it right. Why does this matter?

At least this is something I only have to worry about once a year. And for the occasional birthday. And for anniversaries. And for...

hiyo silverware away

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a spoon out of the drawer that just didn't feel right. Upon further inspection I found that it did not match any other silverware in the house. Where did it come from? Did we somehow accidentally swipe it from someone's house, or maybe from church?

Consider this a "found" poster for a wayward spoon. The spoon on the left is the pattern that our family uses. The spoon on the right is the newcomer to our household. Are you missing a spoon that looks like this?

barely blogworthy

It seems like a lot of stuff is happening that is just barely blogworthy. I've had a hard time thinking of a way to type most of it up without a voice in the back of my head telling me that no one would really care. Instead of typing a post about one thing that few would really care about, this is the blog of several things that few would really care about.

NJ
He's been trying to crawl lately. It's kind of weird to me because until a week ago he hated to be on his stomach. Now he constantly flips onto his stomach to try to take off. So far, he is very stationary.

School
I took my last final for the semester on Tuesday. The professor in that class likes trick questions, so I don't really know how I did. I was one of the first people to complete the test, though, if that is any indication. Thirteen credits down. Thirty-nine to go.

Laptop
I have been without my laptop for a week and a half while I waited for some warranty work to be performed on it. I was genuinely concerned that I wouldn't get the laptop back by Christmas, but I got it back yesterday. Not only that, but Acer replaced my LCD screen even though that is not the reason I sent it in for repairs. I know that Dash had a bad experience with Acer, but so far mine is very positive. I am becoming a loyal customer.

Stress
Since school ended, my stress level has dropped significantly. Golden's is higher than ever because she has a lot of things to do before Christmas. I really need to help her out more, but where to start?

Movies
I think I am going to make it a habit to watch a movie immediately after my last final every finals week. I have done this twice now and it really helps me stay motivated to study. The movie I watched on Tuesday night was Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. It is certainly more politically correct than the name implies. The movie has flashes of brilliance, but the majority of it is kind of dull.

Books
I just finished Best Case Scenario, which is a spoof on the Worst Case Scenario books. Like the aforementioned movie, flashes of brilliance between dull spots.

Blog
I'm actually kind of annoyed at Blogger right now. I really shouldn't be, but the functionality that I have been really wanting (called labels or tags) is being offered in the beta version of Blogger. When I tried to upgrade I was directed to a page stating that one of my blogs did not qualify for beta yet. The description seemed to indicate that I have too many posts and comments. I'm looking forward to being able to classify my posts by topic so it's easier to remember the things I have already written.

That's it. The stuff that individually didn't warrant a post, but together got one anyway.

december 13

It's weird how specific days stick out to me. I can't remember most birthdays, anniversaries, or other important days, but I can remember days when minor things happened to me in the past. One of those minor things was on December 13, 1989.

I always loved playing sports but didn't get too many opportunities to play, in large part because of my size. That is why I was excited to get the flyer that was handed out in my fifth grade class about wrestling on December 13th. This was my chance to get into a sport where being small wasn't a big deal, since I would get to wrestle within a weight class.

This was in a small town in South Dakota that did not have a lunch program at the time, so kids would go home for lunch then come back to the school. As we would wait to get let back into the school some of the boys would take turns sliding across ice puddles and the other boys waiting for their turn would try to knock them over. I tried this but neglected to take off my backpack, so I fell over quickly and was not able to properly break my fall before my head hit the ice. A few moments later the school bell rang.

When I came to it was about ten or fifteen minutes later and I was sitting in class with a book in my hand. It felt like I had awaken from a dream that lasted months. I knew I had hit my head because of the throbbing pain, and I knew that it was December because of the calendar on the wall. I knew who I was and I knew who everyone else was. I has simply lost all my short term memory. It was like I had been rebooted and all my programs hadn't started up yet. I gradually got back all of my memory except everything between the school bell and when I "awoke."

I wouldn't wish the headache I had on anyone, but the real tragedy on that day was that I lost the opportunity to sign up for wrestling. It's a chapter in my life that never was, and it came to a head on December 13. That, at least, I do remember.

emotional complexity

In my topic for today I have to readily acknowledge that I have very little idea about what I am talking about. This is probably the case with most of the topics on this blog, but this is unique in that in this case I wholeheartedly confess my ignorance.

I really think that as a man, or at least a certain type of "insensitive" man, I do not experience the nuance of emotions that I see a lot of women experience. I think the fact that many men are like me in this regard has caused some women to believe men don't experience emotion, but my observation is that this a short-sighted assessment.

I probably experience emotion as strongly as most women do. I couldn't prove that one way or the other, but I think the difference is that the way I experience emotion varies dramatically. This is due to a few factors, some of which are listed below.

First, I think that most women have a wider variety of emotions within the major emotions than most men. There are probably exceptions to this rule of thumb, but using myself as the guinea pig seems to bear this out.

A good example of this is in movies. There are a lot of movies (or books, or songs, or whatever) out there that I find incredibly boring because I view them as emotional tripe. Specifically, I think the point of the movies is to elicit a specific series of emotions out of the audience. I think that in the same way that two shades of red may look the same to a colorblind person (something I do understand), two shades of the same emotion feel like the same thing to me. As a result the movie just feels like the same old thing all the way through. At this point, that is how I am convincing myself that The Pianist really is a good movie, but it's just over my head.

This theory also helps me understand the appeal of more emotional movies, because I can appreciate intellectual complexity within storylines. If I just assume that I am the emotional "least common denominator" in the crowd I can better understand that I am as unqualified to give my opinion of that aspect of the story as someone who doesn't understand the plot would be.

Also, just like I will never understand the difference between the two shades of red, I don't think I will ever understand the differences between two similar emotions if I have not been blessed with the ability from birth. Maybe I could be trained to recognize them, but certainly not to understand them.

Second, the things most women and men are emotional about differ, so when men really do express emotion it isn't properly recognized. I alluded to this earlier, but the movies Click and RV struck my emotions in a way that I don't believe they struck Golden. You, Me, and Dupree did the same thing. I think it's emotion (and a deflated self-esteem) that is driving the men in those movies to do the things they do.

In order for me to be involved in a story emotionally, there has to be something other than emotion to draw me in. With the video More it is the ability to see myself making some of the same mistakes as the protagonist. With The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it is a fuller understanding of the sacrifice of the crucifixion. Neither spend too long dwelling on emotion, so that helps as well.

Third, there are emotions that culture has deemed more appropriate for one gender to display than another. Men get to display the less nuanced emotions like anger while women get to display the more nuanced emotions like sorrow. Men get to shout. Women get to cry, weep, sigh, wail, sob, etc. Women who agressively display anger are considered overbearing. Men who cry or act depressed are momma's boys or just creepy.

Fourth, I think that women generally experience more things through emotion than men. Golden listens to music that she connects with on an emotional level. I listen to music that is enjoyable for many reasons other than emotion. There are only a few songs that I like based on emotion, and even for those I have other reasons besides emotion to enjoy the song (for example, strong lyrics or a good and complex harmony).

Finally, I think that more women enjoy experiencing all emotions (both good and bad) than men do. How many men do you hear say they need a good cry, or talk about their experience with chocolate like it is a close friend?

What's the end result of all of this? I understand my emotional limitations, but will continue to gripe when situations get overly emotional. Golden will have to continue to learn to put up with me.

more

I am always looking for things that will give me an insight on truth. Be it a movie or book or a song lyric, I am always interested in either something that will aid in my understanding truth or better illustrate some truth that I already accept.

I generally like things at Despair.com for the humor value, but I found a video there that is very serious. The meaning that I get out of the video called "More" is simple yet profound. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

* The video can take a little time to load if you have a slow Internet connection. The play time to the ending credits is just over five minutes.

shift your feet

Three of the four classes I have taken or am taking this semester have been in rooms laid out the same way. As a result, in all three classes I have chosen the exact same seat. I noticed a lot of other people do precisely the same thing.

I am not sure if it is a subconscious preference, but when I enter a mostly empty classroom I tend to sit in the middle rows and a little to the left of the speaker from the speaker's perspective. I am sure this says something about my mental competence or emotional stability that I am unaware of.

Once I have chosen a chair in the first class period, I by far prefer to keep that chair in future class periods. In my fourth class the room was shaped differently and was proportionally smaller. Something that happened a lot more there was that one person would sit in a different place than he or she had in the previous week causing another person to have to find a new seat and so on. This created a domino effect that shifted the class around the room weekly. I am sure my frustration at having to find a new place to sit every week says something about my mental competence or emotional stability that I am unaware of.

What frustrates me the most about changing my seating location is that I am concerned I will be taking someone else's seat. A lot of people pick their seats because it is near someone they are friends with. I don't want to accidentally waltz into someone else's happy place. I know that says something about my mental competence and emotional stability that I am aware of. It says I am an obsessive fiend.

dutch

"It's the same thing with the feminists. You know, they want everything to be equal... everything! But when the check comes, where are they?" - George Costanza

The word of the day that we were discussing in my office the other day was, "dutch," as in going on a dutch date. Apparently, the term was originally a means for the English to denigrate the Dutch in a time when they were in competition for the same resources.

This got me interested. How many people have actually gone dutch? I've never gone on a dutch date. Not that I've dated much. No one in my office admitted to it, either, though. This leads to more questions. Arbitrary cultural norms tend to get me thinking like this.

I think I should make it clear that I am not here to agree with George, but rather understand what other people think about the man paying for the events in the relationship. I am certainly not trying to make a point with this post. This is one topic that I simply know very little about how people feel.

I wonder how many men feel they have to be the one to pay to prove their manhood. I wonder how many men feel they have to be the one to pay because that is what society says. I wonder how many women would be offended if the man decided he wanted to go dutch. I wonder how many men would be offended if the woman insisted on the date being dutch.

I wonder who initially determined that the man pays for the date. When the date was invented, did the man decide to pay because he wanted to prove that he had wealth? Did the woman decide the man would pay because she wanted him to prove that he had wealth?

When Golden and I were dating neither of us had too much money, but I did pay for most of the dates. I would probably have been a little bothered if I wasn't paying, but I do remember wondering if the guy didn't somehow get the short end of the stick. I didn't complain too much, though, since we both liked McDonalds.

When Golden did pay for the date (specifically Spring Fling at school, which was like a Sadie Hawkins event) she would typically hand me the money so that restaurant workers wouldn't think that she was paying. I think she did that to save my ego, which was very sweet.

I can see many positives and many negatives in this setup of the man paying. One of the huge negatives is that guys who have little or no money might be limited in their dating options. I strongly considered not dating at all in my first year at college to save what money I had when I first got there. A lot of girls at school liked to complain that guys there didn't bother asking girls out, but I don't think they understood the impact finances may have played in that situation.

The positives are mostly centered around the fact that men are going to be more likely to have the need to provide financially, so paying could meet that need. God must have put it there for some reason.

What do you think? Do you like the current setup or hate it? Am I approaching this like a male chauvinist? Is there anything that says, "I love you," more than covering the entire cost of a cheeseburger value meal?

not another sci-fi

Not long after I started this blog I came up with a list of generalizations for "girl movies." When I was doing that I promised myself I'd make a similar list for sci-fi movies to even out some of the bias I showed in that post. Since I just recently remembered this promise I made to myself, here's my sci-fi list.

• Most futuristic sci-fi movies assume an idealistic view of the future (like the ethically advanced and cashless society in Star Trek) or a pessimistic view of the future (like Waterworld, where we've destroyed the earth and no one is to be trusted). There's not much middle ground.
• If technology is the focus of a sci-fi, be assured that it will turn on humans. In Terminator 3 we even learn that judgment day is inevitable, even if it can be delayed. In I, Robot we learn that even establishing rules within technology will backfire.
• If sci-fi movies are any indication, human existence will be threatened by aliens (The Puppetmasters, Titan AE), a natural disaster (Armageddon, Deep Impact), or overuse of resources (Lost In Space, Soylent Green) some time in the next fifty to one hundred years.
• When aliens do attack they will fail due to some minor issue they failed to consider, but had absolutely no excuse of overlooking (ID4, Signs, War of the Worlds).
• There are few unattractive men and no unattractive women on spaceships (or starships for Trekkies).
• Speaking of people on spaceships, for some reason the perfect captain is always the rebel who, even though he is a rebel, still thinks twice before shooting. Both Captains Kirk and Picard follow this mold. Han Solo is too hotheaded to qualify when he is introduced in the first Star Wars movie, but he mellows just enough by the end of Return of the Jedi.
• The perfect way to address a complicated problem is to present a solution in technobabble that the audience can't understand or question. This is a major issue in Star Trek, but also shows up in ID4 with the "computer virus."
• The government (X-Files, Muppets from Space) and big business (the Alien movies) always have something nefarious to hide.
• Clothing fashions in the future will just be more skintight and outlandish versions of the clothes that were popular at the time when the movie in question was created (The Fifth Element, Flash Gordon).
• You can go anywhere in the universe in an instant if you just know how to use wormholes (Contact, Wing Commander, Event Horizon, Stargate).
• It doesn't matter if you use a wormhole or not, travel that should take lifetimes even at greater than light speed will only take a few days in a regular spaceship (multiple occurrences throughout both the Star Trek and Star Wars series, Serenity, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
• Physics in outer space are the same as within the earth's atmostphere. In the Star Wars series you can hear the Death Star blowing up, spaceships can bank to turn, and some sort of phantom space wind blows hostile robots off the wings of ships.
• I have to give credit for this one to a coworker/blurker. When aliens are actually friendly, we will be hostile to them (E.T., Flight of the Navigator).

As you can tell, I don't watch too many sci-fi movies. I need to pick up the pace a bit if I am ever to truly understand and appreciate the genre.

The following are movies I wanted to work into this list, but didn't get around to: The Matrix movies, Gattaca, eXistenZ, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Time Machine, Short Circuit, Zathura, Predator, Black Hole, Total Recall, The Running Man, Pitch Black, Dune, Blade Runner, and many others. If you figure a way to include any of these in new points for the list, let me know.

snow place like home

After the ice then snow storm this past week I wondered how difficult it would be to get to work Friday morning. Turns out we got only a few inches of snow where we live. Nowhere between here and the office got much more.

It would have had to be pretty bad for me not to head into the office, but a part of me wished it had gotten that bad. Apparently, someone else in my office building had the same thought.

The picture below is from just outside where several corner offices (including my manager's office) are in our building. Whoever stomped it out got his or her point across loud and clear.

click - thanksgiving pt 3

Each post this week is in regard to a specific event surrounding my Thanksgiving break. This is post three, and the final post, in the series.

Golden and I watched the movie Click last weekend with her parents. Overall, it was an acceptable movie that played out how I anticipated it would. It was entertaining enough, but I did have two basic complaints. The first complaint contains a few spoilers regarding the storyline.

Start Spoilers
First, the main character's remote control fast forwards in his life based upon past fast forwarding patterns. No manual override is provided. What self-respecting engineer wouldn't add a manual override? Only an idiot engineer would think that I obviously want to always fast forward through all future showers if I did that just once before.

I have to forgive this only because the movie was trying to make a point and it wouldn't have been able to if it allowed the main character to change his mind. It seems like a minor thing, but the revelation that the main character has at the end is completely contingent on this flawed engineering design.

Obviously, this is a nerdy complaint. It messed with my ability to suspend belief, though.
End Spoilers

The second complaint I have may or may not be a spoiler. I knew ahead of time from the commercials and from previous movies how this would go down, but maybe someone else hasn't figured it out yet. If you have not seen the movie yet and you honestly have no idea what the foundational point is that the movie is trying to make, what I still have to say might contain spoilers. Also, this second complaint has everything to do with the fact that I approach these types of movies with a male point of view.

Almost the entirety of the plot revolves around the fact that the main character puts work before family and learns the hard way that it should be the other way around. His revelation is that he should have completely ignored everything his boss said and given all his spare time to his family, because to not do so is a slippery slope to losing everything he cares about. It is furthermore implied that to consider the financial implications of such a decision would be selfish.

This is a common theme in movies, and I am continually struck by how it is always the male character who is too involved in his job or who is unwilling to stand up to the boss who is at fault. This a major theme in RV, The Family Man, Anger Management, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to name a few.

My complaint, which applies to Click and RV specifically, is that the things that the main character does or doesn't do is portrayed as completely his fault. The family has little or no responsibility for the pressure that they put on the dad. Adam Sandler's and Robin Williams' characters would not go to the lengths they do in these two movies if they did not get pressure from their families, but this is not sufficiently addressed. It is easier to just make the whole thing dad's fault.

As I said, the overall plot was fine. I just wish these movies wouldn't always pretend like all family issues are due to a dad's messed up priorities. Take this from a dad.

visit - thanksgiving pt 2

Each post this week is in regard to a specific event surrounding my Thanksgiving break. This is post two in the series.

On Friday we visited my grandmother's house so she could see NJ for the first time in three months. He has grown quite a bit since then.

We really did not have the opportunity to visit my grandmother on Thanksgiving day, but from the sound of things, there wouldn't have physically been room anyway. She lives in a small house, and she had more than twenty people in it on Thursday. Crazy.

The real point of the post isn't about this visit in particular, but in the culture of my grandmother versus my culture. I believe T has mentioned something like this about her family once. My grandmother comes from an environment where you just show up at someone's house, sit down and talk, then eat if it is a meal time. No warning phone call is even required.

Knowing something of what was and wasn't required, I called on Friday morning and said we would be there in two to three hours. This was going above and beyond. About ten minutes after we arrived at my grandmother's house her brother and his wife arrived in what I presume was an unannounced visit. They stayed for about an hour to talk then left to visit other family.

It wasn't a bad visit, but I have to say that if I was in that culture it would drive me batty. I do not handle last minute schedule changes well, so I would be continually frustrated. I prefer to know in advance what is happening. That's just one more reason I'm glad I wasn't born fifty years earlier.

sick - thanksgiving pt 1

Each post this week is in regard to a specific event surrounding my Thanksgiving break. This is post one in the series.

When Golden got home on Wednesday T let her know that NJ was starting to get feverish. He wasn't that bad until we got to Springfield, and actually slept a little on the trip. Once we got there, though, he would not go back to sleep and he acted like he was having trouble breathing. He kept crying and squealing because he was so tired. There was some debate about what to do, and a consensus was finally reached to visit the local walk in clinic.

NJ didn't have any infections, so the main value of the visit was some peace of mind about his health, but it does count as the first (of what I am sure will be many) time we had to have an illness checked out late at night.

Throughout the visit with the grandparents NJ battled with sinus congestion, but such is the life of someone who inherited Golden's and my sinuses. Sorry, NJ.

On a related note, I am posting this on Sunday night rather than my usual Monday morning because I got whatever NJ has (or had). The symptoms I am experiencing are more severe than most colds that I am used to, so there is an outside chance of me calling in to work sick tomorrow and not having the opportunity to post this at my normal time from the office.

is anyone out there?

I don't really have a typical post today or for the rest of the week given that I will be at Golden's family's house over the weekend. I just have an informal question. Has anyone noticed that things have slowed down dramatically over the last month or so in our little blog world?

Comments haven't totally dried up, but I am getting the feeling that perhaps there is a widely held feeling that either this is getting boring or that this isn't as important as it once was. It could be that several people are just taking a break at the same time. At this time I have no plans to change my habits on the blogs, but if I notice it continuing to slow down I'll probably reduce my posting to two or three a week rather than four a week since it seems like overkill when compared with most of the other blogs.

Don't read this as a complaint. It is actually me trying to test the waters to see what is happening out there. I'd like to keep the blogs going as long as possible because I think they are incredibly valuable, so I want to make sure my routines are encouraging rather than discouraging people to continue to post their thoughts.

So... what are your thoughts? Are things really slowing down? Is it just temporary? Should I keep my current pace or should I slow down a bit?

faux pas

My department at work has employees all over the world. One of these offices in East Asia works at the same time as our office and interacts with my office quite a bit. One person in particular from this office regularly contacts me requesting technical assistance for specific issues. If I have time, I do what I can.

Last week this person asked me about an issue that I happened to have worked on quite a bit, so I explained in what I am sure was a confusing level of detail what caused the issue and how it should be addressed. I am used to people not completely following my line of thinking, so I asked what I thought was an innocuous clarification question, "Do you understand what I am saying?" I got no response for a while and finally the person asked if I would put what I just said into an email. I obliged and went on with life.

That night I went to my "Managing in a Global Environment" class where the lecture was on East Asia. In most nations in this region, I learned, it is considered rude to ask a question that forces someone to say they can't do something or don't know something. To answer, "No," is to acknowledge the inability or lack of will to satisfy someone else's requirements. Rather than ask direct questions that could force a negative response, one should ask indirect questions to get that information.

It's not bad enough that I can't interact properly in my own culture. I have to mess with people in other cultures as well. I wonder what else I say to people from other countries that means something I never intended. Give me time, and I'm sure I'll find a way to offend everyone.

danita

NJ is 139 days old today. That doesn't sound like much of a milestone. It isn't a round number, and only in a baby's first couple of weeks does anyone measure age in days. It is a very serious milestone for me, though.

When people ask me how many siblings I have I always answer that I have one sister. This is not completely true. Less than two months before my second birthday my mom gave birth to my sister Danita. Danita had a lot of medical problems, but I think most of them had to do with her skeletal structure. I do not know many details about that, though. Most of the questions I have asked about her were when I was too young to get into great medical detail.

I don't remember much about Danita. In fact there is a possibility that the memories I do have are somewhat concocted from the few pictures that exist of her. I think the memories are real, but they are too foggy to be sure. I do know that I did not have too much trouble understanding when she died. I think I was too young for the gravity of the situation to bother me.

Danita passed away October 23, 1981, just 139 days after her birth, due to a case pneumonia that the pediatrician was slow to respond to. I have always known that the experience was difficult for my parents, but I never completely thought through how old 139 days really is. Since this is still the infant stage, it doesn't sound like a lot of time to get involved in a child's life. Now that I have NJ I can honestly say that I don't know how I would deal if something similar happened to him.

A little over a year after Danita died my youngest sister was born. She received the middle name "Joy" because my parents didn't know if they would have another child after Danita. For the first time in my life, I think I can appreciate why.

morning person

For the first couple of months after NJ was born I thought that he would never sleep. His sleep patterns were relatively random at first, and he did not sleep through much of the night. Now, he commonly sleeps from 7PM to 5 or 6AM. I am mostly thankful because a lot of people have problems with their kids' sleeping habits, but I am also a tad bit frustrated.

NJ's best hours appear to be in the 7AM to 9AM range. This means that when I am getting ready for work I am continually wanting to spend time with him. It also means that I am groggy during his best times. It finally means that I hate leaving home for work because he is in a good mood, and if I get home too late he will already be sleeping.

It's wrong that he is all smiles and jumping up and down in his exersaucer when I have to be headed to the office. It's like a horrible practical joke on a cosmic scale. I guess that is why God made weekends. He was providing me with a consolation prize.

frosty reception

There are a multitude of reasons that I don't like cold weather, but one of the worst is something I experience many, if not most, weekday mornings from November to March.

Since we only have one garage and Golden's car is the only one that fits, my car sits on the side of the road overnight. The next morning I very often find that Jack Frost has visited. At this time of year, there is a chance that it is just dew, so I often say a quick prayer on the walk from the house to the car that the coating I see on the car will wipe away.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but I hate having to scrape the car. It is a cold and wet process, I am usually having to compromise on either doing an incomplete job or going slowly, and I usually haven't allotted enough time to just start the car and let it warm up. As BB learned, leaving the car running may be kind of risky, anyway.

To all those people who get to store their cars in a garage away from nightly ice accumulation, be thankful. But for the grace of God, there scrape you.

drokes

In my office a joke that might typically come from me is called a droke. I don't have to have told the joke for it to be a droke. I just have to have told similar jokes in the past.

Drokes are typically classified as Type 1 (puns) or Type 2 (subtle humor). I am willing to accept this classification. I am not willing to accept the further narrowing that some others have done to subtype A (unfunny) and subtype B (funny). If a joke is not funny or clever it is not a droke. Case closed.

These classifications have been established by a few people who claim to be on the self-appointed droke classification committee, whose only rule seems to be that I cannot be a part in the decision making of the committee. I think I need to take a page from Calvin and Hobbe's book and create the Get Rid Of Slimy commiteeS club. That's neither here nor there, though.

A week or two ago I decided to create a Venn diagram of drokes on a markerboard at work because I am a geek and I wanted to accurately depict the occasionally maligned drokes. My representation is captured below.
At least 99% of drokes are either funny or clever or both. Some puns are included in drokes, but not unless they are funny or clever. There is no such thing as a "1A" droke.

The committee, not to be outdone, created their own Venn diagram which they call "official." As official as a self-appointed committee can make a diagram, I guess. The diagram is a little prettier, but I do not believe it depicts reality nearly as closely. You can see for yourself below. The commitee did come up with a good thought that I hadn't considered, but botched it. They determined that a funny, subtle pun could be considered a "golden droke." The golden droke concept is spectacular, but this definition ignores the fact that every droke is a golden droke. Proof positive not to trust in the work of a committee.

she's a catch

A while back Golden informed me that she first determined how strong of feelings she had for me was when we saw Titanic and I got sea sick. (Yeah, yeah. You can stop laughing at me now.) For a while I have had a hard time focusing on a specific moment where I decided this about her. I didn't really have a eureka moment, but rather slowly got to like her more as I got to know her more. In my pondering, one event did stick out as the point when I determined Golden was a good catch, though.

I have always liked humor, so when I was first exposed to the Internet I used it largely to find jokes. My first Internet connection was my freshman year in college, so this is when most of my joke searching occurred. At this time I found a story (you can read it here) about a scenario where a guy and girl who have been dating are on a completely different page. She says something about their relationship and thinks he is thinking about what she said which causes herself to obsess about it and confuse him. You need to read it to understand if you've never heard it before.

Anyway, I showed this to a guy on my floor who liked it enough to print it out and go around the dorm reading it to random people, most of whom were girls. Rather than laugh, most of the girls would lightly chuckle then, in all seriousness, complain about how that story is so true because guys are so clueless. They seemed to be of the opinion that guys should think exactly the same way women do, and any inability to do so is somehow the guy's fault. Golden was the only girl who heard the joke who I saw react differently.

When Golden heard the story her first reaction was to say, "Yeah, a lot of women are like that." It was that night that I determined that she was in a minority of girls who didn't automatically blame the guy for communication issues. To me, that was the sign of someone who would approach a relationship with some realism rather than in search of a fantasy world. She didn't know it at the time, but she won me over with that comment.

The rest is history.

arachnophobia

As I was watching a special on scorpions this past weekend I was reminded about my fascination and phobia of creepy crawly things.

I think it might be kind of a guy thing, but spiders, scorpions, and insects are very interesting to me. The shapes, textures, and movements of these animals intrigue me, and I often stop on the Animal Planet or National Geographic channels to watch documentaries on them.

While I am watching a show on a bug of some sort, though, I have a habit of thinking that what I am watching on the TV is crawling up my leg or moving across my arm. I go from looking like a normal human being (relatively speaking) to looking like someone who just rubbed poison ivy all over his body.

It doesn't help that I have some mild arachnophobic tendencies. Golden kills more spiders and insects in our house than I do because she is a little braver around them. I can usually deal if I have to, but I very much prefer not to have to.

If we had something more serious like a scorpion I don't know what we'd do. Scream, maybe?

impatient

On Monday I needed to stop by the post office over lunch. I have done this before, so I know that I should expect a crowd. I don't like it, but it isn't something worth griping about.

When I got to the post office, I noticed that I was supposed to take a number to be served. This sort of made sense, but it was the first time I had seen this in a post office. The waiting time was around fifteen minutes.

Every couple of minutes one of the cashiers would call a number, and another one if no one responded to the previous number. Not long before my turn to the cashier someone complained that he had been skipped. A lady behind the counter told the man that she was not currently on a register so the next available cashier could take care of him. I didn't see it because I was across the room but the rumblings in line were that the guy got upset and left in a huff. I just don't understand this.

Why do people expect the world to revolve around them? I understand getting frustrated. I don't like waiting for my turn in line either. If I hadn't been paying attention when my number was called, though, I would accept that as my own fault.

Golden and I witnessed a similar, but perhaps more stupid, incident a couple of years ago. It was Christmas Eve and we were stuck in Philadelphia International Airport. The baggage handlers for US Airways had staged a sick out, so a ton of people were stuck in Philadelphia and Charlotte. Almost everyone who was stuck understood that there was nothing that could be done and that the people at the US Airways counter could do nothing about it. Almost everyone swapped stories and tried to make the best of a bad situation. Not absolutely everyone, though.

While we were waiting for a plane that was supposed to take off at 6:30PM to get its necessary crew at 7:30, then 8:30, everyone was getting a little irritable. Most of the people had been there since the morning, and it was Christmas Eve. One person took the cake, though.

This lady was traveling with what I assume were her three daughters. She was probably in her mid forties and her daughters were probably ten to eighteen in age. Slowly throughout our wait, the mother got more and more antsy, and she went over to talk not-so-nicely with the man at the desk at our gate multiple times. The guy couldn't do anything, so he just tried to mollify her the best he could. Finally, the woman told the guy at the counter to forget it. She and her daughters weren't going to get on the plane. She'd just give up her seats. I think she thought she won a moral victory. Her daughters were visibly unhappy with her decision, though.

A half hour later, an intercom announcement stated that the plane would be boarding shortly. The last I saw of the woman, she was trying unsuccessfully to get her seats back. I often wonder how that incident worked itself out. I'm sure the woman learned a valuable lesson about patience and vowed to be a more tolerant person in the future. Or not.

portland or bust

In honor of BB's four day drive to Portland with Monty the dog that starts tomorrow, this is a list of the top ten ideas of what BB can do to entertain himself on the trip.

10. For the first few hours he should be on I-70 in Kansas or I-80 in Nebraska, so a nap should be in order. He shouldn't have to steer at all as the drive is pretty much a straight shot. Even if he were to drive off the road, what's he going to hit anyway?

9. Listen to a small percentage of the songs he has downloaded over the past month.

8. Count the number of cars he passes in Wyoming. He could use the fingers on both hands if necessary.

7. Do a Chinese fire drill with Monty and close and lock the doors before Monty can get back in. That dog will be so embarrassed!

6. Count the hours between when he first sees the Rocky Mountains to when he actually reaches the Rocky Mountains.

5. Try to find a coffee shop in Salt Lake City. Apparently Mormons don't like their caffeine.

4. Sing 80s songs to Monty. "I want to know what love is..."

3. Just stop in random locations and look for something fun to do. If BB knew how to be creative he could make this work. Just kidding, I figured I would parrot Forrest for a moment.

2. Remember once he gets to Portland everything that he forgot to pack.

1. Dream up hundreds of reasons why the whole trip, no matter how enjoyable it was, "sucked."

your cheatin' heart

Cheating is a big deal in graduate programs. Especially MBA programs. At least that is what a recent article I read at Yahoo Finance says. According to some study MBA students are more likely than any other types of students to cheat, and over half admit to having cheated at some point in the last year.

Normally something like that wouldn't phase me, but it really stuck out now that I am in an MBA program. Are half of the people I am taking classes with really cheating? Also, why is an MBA program more likely to create or attract cheaters? I have a few theories about this.

A lot of the people I take classes with are getting their education paid by their companies so long as they keep up the grades. In some other programs people may be more likely foot the bill themselves. When a grade impacts a person financially, that probably encourages cheating.

A lot of people who are naturally greedy and competitive are probably drawn to the MBA because high-paying, executive-level jobs require an MBA. While being an executive does not mean you are greedy and competitive, being greedy and competitive certainly makes an being an executive appealing.

I think that MBA programs have a wider variety of classes than most programs, so most students will run into at least one class that is challenging. Accounting is different from Marketing, which is different from Organizational Behavior, which is different from Finance, which is different from...

In short, even though I know it was a good decision, it makes me think twice about the degree I chose to pursue. I don't currently have the desire to be a high powered executive. I really just want to more efficiently be able to take advantage of my strengths than I currently am and be able to retain a job through any future dips in the job market so I can better support my family. In the middle of all this I have to ask myself a simple question. Is it true that nice guys finish last?

school for the gifted

Last Saturday night Golden briefly pushed rather than pulled on a door (or vice versa) at the church. It was very quick, but I still had time to tease her about the Midvale School for the Gifted Far Side comic.

Yesterday I got my payback. I was going down the elevator to leave work with someone I didn't know who was trying to get a conversation going. When the door opened he was sure to say, "You first," so I had him at my back as a I approached the exterior doors. I wasn't thinking and so I pulled on one of the doors to get out. "This is strange," I thought. "Why would they lock this door from the inside." After I tried the other one, the guy behind me reminded me that these doors are meant to be pushed.

I am thinking about making a paper bag over my head part of my normal attire to work now.

early voting

Election day this year is on November 7. This is a problem for me because I never vote before work and I have class after work that day. So, this past weekend I decided to vote early. One of the early voting locations is not far from my house, so it made total sense to go early this time around.

The night before, I did as much investigation as I could online about the people running for office that I could. The problem is the people running for local positions did not always have much information online about their positions and leadership philosophies. I did what I could, though.

I expected that when I got to the voting location that there would be a wide variety of ages. I know that older people tend to vote more, but I figured on a Saturday more younger (working age) people would show. There weren't too many people there, but the seniors still outnumbered everyone else.

When I got to the voting booth, a man there in his seventies explained how to use the electronic voting systems to me. I am not used to being on the receiving end of that lecture.

Since I had investigated this all ahead of time, I knew how I was going to vote on every race but one. Either I missed the information online or the Johnson County Elections website didn't have our district county commissioner race listed. Anyway, since I didn't know anything about the race I just didn't vote for it. I'd like to think I am better than to vote for someone because I recognize his or her name instead of his or her policies, so I got a tad bit arrogant about this for a few seconds before I realized how ridiculous the arrogance was.

Finally, even though I cannot vote any more I still have to suffer through another week of political ads along with everyone else. I wish there was a way to filter those out completely. I am sure I'm not alone in that sentiment.

end of days

I honestly do not know how my audience as a whole will take this post. It reflects my true opinions, but I think there are people who really care about this topic and some who really don't, and I am horrible at distinguishing the two. Regardless as to which group you are in, please read this with a grain of salt.

This past weekend I watched The Omen. The idea of the movie is that things that have happened in recent years correlate to the seven trumpets in Revelation 8, and that the Beast arrived on earth in the form of a baby on June 6, 2006. The movie was good, but not great. It was about what I expected.

After I watched the movie, though, I noticed that there was a short documentary on the beliefs surrounding the end times and specifically the mark of the beast in the DVD extras. A wide variety of folks were interviewed from Tim LaHaye to the leader of The Church of Satan. As is usually the case, a lot of people put a lot of value in their personal beliefs about prophesies in Revelation.

I am always amazed at the interest that the end times (also called eschatology) seems to inspire in church settings. In the last decade Christian producers have released not just one but two movies to theaters on the last days. The Left Behind series was somehow stretched to ten books. Finally, in my own experience when people in one specific class in my church were asked one summer to list questions they wanted our pastoral staff to address, they listed about four weeks of questions on the end times. Obviously, there are people who care. I am very nearly not one of those people.

Because I don't see how it applies to everyday life, the end times is something that I don't expend too much energy over. I tend to avoid conversations about it and do not go out of my way to study it.

There is one thing about the end times that I do care about. I believe that some people substitute an interest in knowing God with an interest in knowing what is going to happen in the future. Rather than look at the real meat in Scripture, I think that many people would prefer to waste time speculating what the four horsemen, or the seven bowls, or the seven trumpets mean. I do not think this is God's intent.

My eschatological belief is that God does not intend for us to know what exactly is going to happen, and that it is a waste of time to obsess over it. This may sound weird coming from someone who believes in the same Bible that contains the books of Daniel and Revelation, but it is true. I believe that if God wanted us to care about the specifics of how things will work out in the end He would have given us specifics. Instead God gave us enough information to know that there will be an end of days at some point (which some preterists actually disagree with, but it's not worth arguing) and that it will eventually be followed by a judgment. The rest is purposely coded in a way that we cannot decrypt.

If you think this sounds dumb, consider that God did this once before. There were Jews in Jesus' time who were looking for a Messiah to free them from Rome's iron grip. They had plenty of prophesies that could be interpreted to support these beliefs, however wrong the beliefs were. Every time I hear someone say with certainty that some obscure prophesy in Daniel or Revelation refers to such and such event that will happen at this specific point in a timeline, I am reminded of those people who thought the Messiah would be a warrior rather than a servant.

What really gets under my skin is when someone who I think obsesses too much about the end times refers to a verse like it is the ultimate proof that what they are saying is correct, but say it so quickly that no one who wanted to check the context could remember what the passage address was let alone take the time to look it up. But I digress.

Please don't get me wrong. I believe that if end times prophesy is in Scripture it does have value. I just read prophetic passages more simply than a lot of other people do. Revelation is an encouragement to a persecuted church not to give up. That is why there are two chapters' worth of instructions to individual churches. The prophesies in Matthew 24 through 25 are reminders that there are eternal consequences for selfishness. That is why they keep referring to treating others right. Daniel's prophesies are meant to show that governments are temporary and God is permanent. This is where all his prophesy ultimately leads.

To read more into the Bible than is really there is to put words in God's mouth. Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough for that task.

riding high

I have been having a problem with NJ lately that I never would have anticipated. I figured he might have trouble establishing a sleep schedule, or perhaps problems digesting food properly, or maybe he wouldn't like taking baths. I simply didn't figure on this.

When I hold NJ he will not tolerate me sitting down for any period of time. If he is in a particularly good mood it might take him fifteen minutes to decide he wants me to stand up and maybe walk around. It is usually much quicker than that.

Once I am up NJ typically gets much happier, looking around his surroundings and taking it all in. He can be satisfied like this for literally hours. Yesterday, I resorted to carrying him in his strap-on carrier (I think it's called a snuggly) while I stood and walked around with short intervals of sitting. I would have gotten pretty tired otherwise. Plus, I have a lazy streak.

So, as is the case with a lot of things, I generally know how to make NJ happy but I don't understand fully why it is such a big deal to him. Is the view from five feet really that much better than from three?

saved

I have always been a saver. I am sure that part of it was because I was taught to save, but part of it also has to do with a genuine concern about what I would do if I needed the savings and I didn't have it. A final large part of it came from the fact that I learned that saving was the only way I would be able to make a large purchase.

One of the people I work with does not believe in fully utilizing savings. This isn't an issue of math. His stance is that there is no such thing as security, so stressing yourself out to create a false sense of security is pointless. I have taken some issue with this perspective, mostly on mathematical grounds, but he does have one point that bothers me.

What gets under my skin is determining what the Biblical perspective is. The only book in the Bible that might be considered explicitly to back saving money might be Ecclesiastes. Jesus and Paul both made comments that actually implied saving money was less than ideal. What I struggle with is how much of saving money is due to responsibility and how much is due to worry or greed? Are savings a false sense of security? Is it irresponsible not to save?

I have seen people who did not save anything throughout life and expected family, friends, and/or government to take care of them when they were old. This can't be right. Refusing to be generous with those in need because I need a set amount in my savings or 401(k) doesn't seem quite right either. Then again, if Jesus saves, shouldn't I as well?

programmer for hire

About a year and a half ago I put some serious thought into taking on a side job in my spare time. I went so far as to check for approval from my "day job" for me to have a second job. I have long since decided a better use of my time would be to go back to school, so my investigation was short-lived.

Before I decided against doing something on the side, though, I signed up on a web site designed to hook up freelance programmers with potential contracts. I thought that I might be able to find something that would take a few hours on a weekend and maybe make some money in the process.

I never shut down the emailing service from the website, so I get a few emails a week about projects looking for a proposal. The emails are automatically sent to me based on a filter I set up when I signed up. All the emails are pretty much the same, so I don't even read them any more. They are immediately redirected to a separate folder in my email program.

As I was checking my email last night I decided to look through the folder to see what I was missing out on when an email that didn't look like the rest stuck out to me. It said something to the effect of, "Request for Proposal," and was dated July 8. Apparently someone looked through the site, noticed my resume, and thought that I was well suited for this project. The project would have even satisfied my requirement of being able to work on it on off hours.

I have to say I am a little proud because my resume has never impressed for any job other than standard technical support and junior developer roles. It is way past the time for me to submit a proposal, and I wouldn't have anyway, but it is nice to know I could have for at least one job.

pacing

This past weekend I watched North by Northwest, which is a Hitchcock film from 1959. The film is not incredibly long, but for the content it contained I would have expected it to be a little shorter. Conversely, I also watched Poseidon, and that movie kept steadily moving. This is an observation I have often made about the difference between classic movies and movies of today.

I don't want to make it sound like things are better or worse today than they were in the past, but I think the pacing of movies is a good example of the difference in how people approach things today compared to in the past. Popular classic movies often take great time to set a mood. Popular modern movies usually constantly keep the story moving. I think that films like Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur would be difficult to make today because both contain long gaps of story where not much exciting happens, even though both were "action" films.

I think people today as a whole think faster but shorter, and that people as a whole in the past thought slower but longer. A movie from the 1950s is often a very deliberate affair where there is not too much concern about moving the story along. A movie from this millenium is more likely to be edited to keep the storyline moving.

I'll end now before my audience loses interest.

technical difficulties

One of my classes this half of the semester is a pass/fail Global Management class, which looks to be relatively simple. There can't possibly be wrong answers. Also, the grade shouldn't impact my GPA, and it only lasts five weeks.

As an example of the simplicity of the course, half of my last session was devoted to watching a film on the impact of IMF (International Monetary Fund) policies on Jamaica. When the video came on the screen, though, we couldn't hear anything. The volume was adjusted. Wires were checked, and eventually A/V people came by and fixed the issue. They didn't completely fix the issue, though. The volume faded in and out and background noises came through much clearer than voices. Apparently the room had been set up for a satellite conference earlier in the day, and adjustments hadn't been made for a normal video to be played.

I am actually surprised with the number of times this sort of thing occurs. I can't count the number of times a video wouldn't play or a remote control wouldn't work or equipment seemed to spontaneously fail right when it was needed most. This has happened when I was in charge as well. I have had a few occasions when I needed a projector or a TV or something else to work when it just wouldn't.

So, here's the question. Why is it that when technology fails it does so when there are ten or twenty-five or one hundred people are waiting impatiently for it work? When one person sits down at a TV it just works. When one person pops a CD into a music system it just works. When twenty-five people sit down to watch a video, four times out of five something doesn't work. It's enough to drive a person crazy.

that bites

The other night I was minding my own business eating some cereal when it happened. I bit into the inside of lip hard. That was irritating! It hurt, it swelled up a bit, and I just knew that the bite would turn into a canker sore. I know this because I get probably on average one canker sore every month or two due to biting the inside of my mouth.

Once I had bitten the inside of my mouth once, though, it was like my teeth started to like the taste of my blood. I bit into that same location twice more, I lightly bit another location in my mouth once, and I bit my tongue once all over the next fifteen minutes. I was beginning to wonder if something had happened to cause me to lose any sense of coordination in my mouth.

Eventually, I decided it was about to stop eating. I can only take so much self-inflicted violence. Plus, I was full.

when i was younger

As I was reading through my last post something stuck out to me about the perspective. When a person (myself not excluded) writes about some change in his or her opinions, the viewpoint is always taken that the current point of view is the correct one. For example, I used to view sin as one thing and now I view it as another. Therefore, my current view is perfection.

One of the scariest things about having a blog is it is possible that my musings as a twenty-something person will come back to haunt me in my thirties or my forties or even my eighties. Everyone changes, and I am not in any way an exception. However, if someone were to read something that I write today in twenty years, they probably won't account for the fact that some of my opinions may have changed or my approach may have matured.

If I wrote a blog five years ago, I know some things about what I had to say would be different. If I wrote a blog ten years ago, a large percentage of my perceptions would be completely different from what I currently write.

So, what words of mine will I cringe about some day as I am breezing through my posts? What "deep" thoughts will I think are tripe when I am older? What quotes will I find foolish? My goal is to write more that I will be proud of than regret. Only time will tell how frequently I really do put my foot in my mouth.

bad and not so bad

Please note that I write from my own experience in a conservative church culture. I understand that other people may have had different experiences.

I will be getting back to this, but for the meantime, please rank the following misdeeds in your mind in order of seriousness or in order of what you would never want others to think of you. Would you rather have someone think you were prideful than a liar? If so, put dishonesty above pride in the rankings.

Sins to rank: Pride, Vanity, External Anger Issues (verbal abuse, physical abuse, etc), Dishonesty, Gossip/Slander, Selfish Ambition, Being Manipulative, Lust

Usually, when I think of sexism or when I hear others talk about sexism it is in reference to women getting the short end of the stick. I definitely think that happens on occasion, and I do not wish to diminish that with what I am about to say. I agree with some of the claims of sexism I that have heard and not with others that I have heard, but that is fodder for a different post.

Usually, people don't think about sexism against men for what I am sure are a variety of reasons. My experiences within some more conservative church culture, though, has been that femininity is equated to holiness. This is perhaps best illustrated by the typical teaching that is directed specifically at women and at men.

Typical Training Content for Women:

"You probably don't like yourself, but God does. He likes you a lot. He wants you to love yourself. He made you beautiful. Love yourself. God doesn't make things that are not beautiful, so you are beautiful. You shouldn't hate yourself. God loves you."

Typical Training Content for Men:

"You slimeballs! Statistically speaking, about 98% of you are contemplating cheating on your wives. That includes those of you who aren't married.

"If you don't have a job, why aren't you providing for your family? If you do have a job, why aren't you spending enough time with your family?

"If you loved your family you would be a leader. Obviously, you aren't enough of a leader, or you wouldn't be in this session. Leadership means realizing every thought you have is evil. Everyone who has had an evil thought raise your hands. The rest of you are liars. Get into an accountability group now!"

The above descriptions are exaggerations, but they are not complete exaggerations. Because of this approach within the church culture I used to think that women somehow were naturally more holy than men were. Obviously, if men need to be told they are scumbags, but women need to be told to love themselves, men are in worse shape.

Also, it is worth noting that the people who thought I was a good kid when I was growing up always emphasized the aspects of my personality that were not like a typical boy. I didn't roughhouse as much. I had a clean sense of humor. I was more dressed up than other boys at church. Girls were considered good kids specifically if they retained traits believed common to girls.

A final contributing factor to my belief in feminine holiness was the attention that I saw given to traditionally male sins rather than traditionally female sins. Lust and violence were about the worst evils the earth contained. Gossip and vanity were actually encouraged in some settings. Obviously, God cared about punishing the sexually promiscuous and overlooked the wrongs of the people who gossiped about the sexually promiscuous.

I have spent a large part of my life trying to downplay or avoid many of my more male traits because I associated more female traits with the behavior God wanted.

At this previous time in my life, I would have ranked sins I mentioned earlier in the following order. I have marked what I believe are traditional male sins with "M," what I think traditional female sins with "F," and a couple I think are traditionally gender neutral with "N." Just because it is marked with an "M" or an "F" does not mean I think the misdeed is specific to a gender.

1. Lust (M) 2. Dishonesty (N) 3. Anger Issues (M) 4. Pride (N)

5. Selfish Ambition (M) 6. Being Manipulative (F) 7. Gossip/Slander (F) 8. Vanity (F)

I would by far prefer to have been known as a vain person rather than to have been known as a pervert. Actually, that is still the case. It wouldn't bother me much to be wrongly accused of being vain, but to be wrongly accused of being perverted would be absolutely horrible because of the shame involved. Vain people are usually seen as cool, quirky, or refined. I think this is very telling of church views toward masculinity. This doesn't change the fact that one is not really better than the other, though, and that both types of people are self-centered.

My beliefs have changed in recent years. God does not watch for people to commit specific sins so He can punish those who do the really bad things. People choose God or self constantly throughout their lives and come to a point where they are willing for Him to have every aspect of their lives or they are not. There is no better or worse sin. If you are not willing to give something to Him in the end, that is the worst sin. In this way men and women are no different.

metro or not

The argument of the week at work was what counts as metrosexual. Does appearing very stylistic count? Does a person have to care a lot about grooming?

The reason for these questions is that some believe that Ty Pennington of Extreme Makeover counts as a metro. I and at least one other person I work with do not believe so. Others have pointed out that choice in hair and clothing styles are ample evidence of Ty's metroness, but I think that appearances shouldn't count if there is a chance that someone else made the fashion choices. There was also some dispute over whether Ty makes his own fashion choices.

Anyway, this is an issue that has been far from resolved. Does anyone else have input?

not at work

My day off Tuesday reminded me of a question I often ask myself. What's with all the activity around town during typical office and school hours? In retrospect, since I don't know the answer I am probably the wrong person for me to ask.

It seems any time I am not at work on a typical work day I notice a ton of people who are out and about going about their lives and not in the office. I know that a percentage of people are retired and a percentage are homemakers, but not everyone looks like they fall into these categories.

This is what struck me the most about how busy the library was on Tuesday. It was a time when most people are in work, but a large number of people were reading magazines or surfing the net at the library.

When I am out and I see people who I would assume would be in an office at that moment I start wondering. Are they actually working and I don't know it? Do they work weird hours? Are they currently out of work? Are they trust fund babies? Are they on a vacation? Are they full-time students? How is it that they don't have to be physically at work right now? I'd like to know.

livin' la library loca

I took the day off work yesterday and studied at the library for most of the day for my Accounting final. If you don't know what is coming next, you haven't been reading this blog for long. Here's my bulleted list of random thoughts and observations from yesterday.

• Before I went to the library I stopped by the bank to deposit that $20 reimbursement check I got a month ago. I ate breakfast in the parking lot at the bank and noticed that cars were going through the drive-through. I planned on using one of the deposit slips available inside the bank so I walked up to the door and found it locked. That was enjoyable, since several employees were able to watch me perfectly. Apparently, the drive-through opens an hour before the rest of the bank.
• When I got to the library it was about five minutes till nine. It was obvious that the library opened at nine because there was a large group of people (about ten) waiting for the place to open. I have to wonder about people who get up early in the morning and stand in the rain to get into the library as soon as it opens.
• As soon as the library opened, I got out of the car and walked for what was probably twenty seconds to get into the building. What was weird was that everyone in the library had the look like they had been there for a while rather that twenty seconds. It's hard to explain.
• There were posters up for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Two thoughts on that. First, it goes from September 15 to October 15. I'd love to hear why they didn't just pick September or October. Second, the posters were obviously aged, and one was specific to the year 2001. I wonder how many years' use they will get out of those posters.
• There are a ton of people who use the library in the late morning and early afternoon on Tuesday. I'd expect that on Saturday, but Tuesday?
• Two different groups reserved the same conference room at the same time. I got to witness the confusion. Good times.
• All through the test my stomach was making noises. It sounded like I was releasing gas throughout the test. That is definitely not what I was doing.
• My plan really worked out. Taking a day off to study helped me out a lot with my test.

spilled milk

Last night I ran out of milk in the middle of pouring a bowl of cereal. I don't really like opening a new bottle because the first little bit has a habit of dribbling down the side of the bottle, but I didn't have a choice unless I wanted dry cereal.

As I was pulling the plastic ring off the cap so I could open the bottle it stuck and the cap flew off spilling a bit of milk in the process. My immediate reaction was to get mad at the cap. I realized that was stupid, so I decided to get mad at the machinery that created the cap. That was more logical. After I spent a little time cleaning up I realized that even this was stupid.

Why is it that every time something mildly irritating happens my first reaction is to want to blame something or someone else? I think it is that it removes responsibility from me. I was aggravated that I had to clean up and I didn't want to be aggravated at myself.

I think this offers some explanation about how issues can escalate so quickly. If somebody cuts me off, I don't want to believe that it is because I didn't allow him the right-of-way earlier when I should have. I want to just think that the guy is a jerk. I am sure that a lot of other issues, both those with which I am involved and those I am not, would go away if people would stop and think through how stupid the anger is. That would take the fun out of being angry, though.

yankees, go home

I mentioned earlier that I have been a Detroit Tiger fan for a while. As a result, I haven't watched many postseason baseball games with much interest in my short lifetime. Not only have I watched my team decline from bad to worse over the years, I have also watched as some teams amassed all-star lineups for big bucks to essentially buy the World Series.

All this combined to make the past weekend, when the Tigers literally stunned and annihilated the Yankees, a very good weekend for me. The Yankees have a team payroll of just under $200 million dollars. The Red Sox, who are second on the list of how much teams spend, have a payroll nearly $80 million less than this. Because the Yankees have seemed so set on buying the World Series I have viewed the organization as the personification of evil in baseball.

Fortunately, of the top ten spending teams, only the Mets (number five on the list) have not already been eliminated. I'd like to see them go soon as well.

Now that the Yankee players don't have the postseason to keep them busy, here's a list of the top ten things they can do with the $200 million they made this past year.

10. Buy thousands of tokens for the batting cages at the local putt putt place to improve follow through.

9. Keep cable payments up to date so that they can watch the remaining postseason games that show on ESPN.

8. Pool together resources to hire a hit man to take out the pitching staff for whoever next year's postseason opponent is.

7. Increase payments to BALCO.

6. Start an advertising campaign to encourage Steinbrenner to spend $300 million next year.

5. Create own periodical so there will be at least one local newspaper that isn't calling for A-Rod's head.

4. Buy an endless supply of glasses with fake noses so as not to be recognized on the street.

3. Purchase the Detroit Tigers organization and rename it to "The Yankees" to have some playoff wins on the record.

2. Blow it on meaningless junk that will never make anyone happy.

1. Buy tickets to Mets games.

personal constellations

Pepi: "Tell me more! I want to know all the constellations!"
Homer Simpson: "Well, that one's Jerry, the cowboy. And that big-dipper-looking thing is Alan... the cowboy."

Like the above quote from The Simpsons attests, people like to see familiar things in randomness. Few of the constellations look anything like what they are supposed to portray, but that has not kept humanity from seeing fish, or scorpions, or twins, or bulls, or hunters up there. I am apparently no different.

Any time I visit the bathroom or I lay in bed and have the chance to look at a wall, ceiling, floor, or anything else that looks textured or dotted or splotchy, I see a face or animal or something like that. It is not voluntary. I assume most other people are like that, though I also assume that some people are more prone than others to let their attention be pulled to what might be seen in the texture of a wall.

I find it fascinating that, even though I might look at the same wall day after day I will see something different each time. I usually can't even find the face or animal that I noticed the previous time I looked at that patch of wall.

Sometimes I will be so intrigued about some new character that I noticed on the wall that I get spaced out and get lost in imagination about what that character might be doing in his or her current pose. A few days ago in the shower I determined that the Uncle Sam character that my mind had put together was himself lost in thought with his head turned away from me and leaning on his elbow. Kind of like a nonchalant cowboy.

sales strategy

Every time I visit the grocery store any more there is some group trying to sell me something as I enter. On Saturday it was a boy scout troop that was selling popcorn.

I usually am willing to buy a small item to help out the people trying to sell, because it is invariably a large group of kids with two or three adults. It's probably better that they are at the store than going door to door, for safety reasons if nothing else. I don't go out of my way, though.

Back to the story. I was given the typical, "would you be willing to buy..." line as I approached the doors. I commented, as I always do, that I prefer not to purchase items on the way in, but I might buy on the way out. I quickly forgot about the kids and went about my shopping.

On the way out I made sure that I had cash available so I wouldn't have to fumble with my wallet when asked to buy popcorn again. I usually like to make the process as quick as possible because, as far as I am concerned, I am still grocery shopping if I haven't left the parking lot yet. I don't like to shop for groceries for too long.

As I stepped out the door I saw two kids walk my direction. "Here it is," I thought. "It's time to buy the popcorn." Then, to my surprise, I noticed that the kids were walking not toward me, but toward a lady behind me who was trying to enter the store. The kids were apparently explicitly targeting people walking into the store rather than walking out.

What makes this story a little more humorous is that this is the second time in two weeks that something like this has happened to me. The last time I went grocery shopping some kids tried to make the sale on the way in, but not on the way out. Their loss.

klutz

I think I must have had an inner ear problem yesterday. Here's a laundry list of my mistakes on Sunday.

• I was trying to pick up NJ in Sunday School from under a table and bumped his head against the table. It wasn't a hard bump and he was already crying, but since it moved the table some people snickered. It didn't hurt NJ, but it probably made half the class think he may need to be kept away from his dad.
• At the end of class I tipped my cup up to finish my iced tea, and a stream ran from the corner of my mouth down my shirt. This amused several.
• To get a ladder out of the garage I needed to shift some stuff around. As I was moving the weedwacker in a hunched over position I didn't realize that I had moved under some shelves. The neighbors may have seen it because the garage door was open, but I think I was the only person around to get any enjoyment out of that event.
• Later in the day NJ was crying, so I grabbed him and sat down on the floor to give him some attention. As I was holding him I leaned back and banged my head against our rocking chair. NJ smiled, but I have my doubts that his smile was connected to my throbbing head.
• As we were leaving home groups I picked up the baby carrier with NJ inside and promptly banged it against the banister. NJ didn't react, but a few others did.

I'd say more, but I think it's safer if I sit in one location and don't do anything for a while.

saturday afternoon tv

It has always seemed to me that the day and time when I am most likely to have spare time and the freedom to use it, the worst programming is on television. I am referring to Saturday in the afternoon. Even when I was younger I had a hard time getting up early on Saturday mornings. I would sometimes get up for a cartoon I really liked (Garfield and Friends, for example), but I did not consistently get up early on Saturdays. If I had nothing to do on a particular Saturday it was always a little disappointing if I slept through the cartoons in the morning, because the afternoon programming was wretched.

Now it takes a lot more than a Garfield cartoon to get me out of bed on a Saturday morning. I still have a similar problem with Saturday afternoon programming, though. The majority of programming that I can find is sports that I have no interest in watching (college anything, golf, tennis, racing, bowling, etc), westerns, old movies that I am not interested in, reruns of shows I may have been interested in but I have already seen, or cartoons. I would have liked to have the cartoons in the afternoon when I was younger, but I guess them's the breaks.

So, this afternoon as I was looking for something to relax me as a postponed my homework and other household chores, I flipped through the channels. Nothing I wanted to watch was on, so I did what I normally did. I watched a rerun. On Saturday afternoon there is no point in being picky.

easy as pi

A couple of nights ago I was assisting someone with some Statistics homework that I had already worked through. Since I had already done the homework I had an idea of everything that needed to be done.

The guy who I assisted has been very frustrated throughout the class and has pointed out that he majored in drama for his undergrad work, so he doesn't have a foundation in math. I understand some of his frustration, and that is part of the reason I was willing to stay after class and discuss the homework with him.

It occurred to me partially a few days before and partially while I was discussing the homework with him that math itself is not complicated. I don't mean that math is not complicated for people naturally gifted in math. I mean that math itself is not complicated. Math is typically relayed in an intimidating manner.

Part of what I think happened is that this guy saw a bunch of weird characters (sigmas, mus, exclamation marks) and gave up because it looked like a foreign language. It was too much to handle, so he didn't try. The actual problems were really just simple, "replace the symbols with the given numbers and solve," style problems. By the time my classmate would have noticed this he had already called it quits, though.

Another problem with how math is taught is that the purposes of specific formulas are almost never relayed. That isn't as much a problem in this class, but I don't think the drama grad was making the connections in his mind what these formulas he was using had to do with anything.

My opinion is that, if students understand the practical value of the formula and are able to understand the intimidating array of symbols that mathematicians use, they will do well in math even if they are not naturally mathematically inclined. It just seems so easy.

slurm

Golden recently picked up some Sunkist orange pop at the store and this reminded me of a comparison that I have made many times. Every time I see Sunkist I think of the drink Slurm from Futurama, and vise versa. It is actually to the point that I got a few of the guys at the office to call it Sunkist "Slurm."

Maybe this is a stretch, but it's close enough that if I watch much Futurama I tend to drink more Sunkist. In one episode of Futurama, Fry finds out that Slurm is an excrement from a huge slug creature, but in the end that doesn't matter because it is so addictive. Sunkist isn't really addictive, but I did crave it every time I saw that episode.

So, am I the only one who sees the similarity, or am I right?

tug of war

Imagine a game of tug of war with three teams. Rather than two teams pulling opposite directions on a singular rope, three teams pull at 120 degree angles from each other on individual ropes that are secured to a central ring that is sturdy and small. The object of the contest is to be the first team to pull the ring to the location where your team started.

A three team tug of war is how I view my strategy when I voice my disagreement with someone about something. I generally view myself as one of the teams and the two other teams as those who disagree with me trending toward the opposite extremes. When I have heard a lot of one side of an argument and not the other, I will usually view this like one of the two teams is pulling the other team too far. Thus, I will often jump in and argue against that view. In my analogy, I would be leaning my team so that I am pulling harder against the strong team than the weak one. There are at least three problems with this perspective on life, though.

The first problem is that it always makes me think that I don't have an extreme viewpoint because I can always find people or philosophies that are more extreme than I am. I know some of the things I believe are relatively extreme when compared to someone typical. As a result, perhaps my motives aren't as noble as I think.

The second problem is that if I am around individual people only in certain contexts (for example, in liberal or conservative environments) I will look more extreme in my beliefs than I really am. I remember being in a Christian Philosophy class a few years back and someone I had been acquainted with for a couple years noted that she didn't realize how liberal I was. I probably wasn't really as liberal as she thought I was, though. I just played the devil's advocate a lot with some of the more conservative people in the class.

This is probably the problem that bugs me the most because I don't like people thinking I believe something that I don't.

The third problem is that there are some people who must feel like I am always disagreeing with them. I don't know if this makes the problem more or less extreme, but I generally (but don't always) follow a few specific rules in deciding whether to pipe up.

1. I stand down when someone is too sensitive or immature to deal with my disagreement.
2. I stand down when I don't care enough about the issue.
3. I stand down when I don't think disagreeing will make anyone understand my point of view any better, and when disagreeing won't assist me in understanding the other person's point of view.

Given these rules, it must be worth noting that if I voice my opposition to a point of view, it is partly out of respect that I do. Most of the time, if I voice disagreement with others it is either because I want to learn from how they are thinking or I want to know that they understand the opposing views. Sometimes I voice my opinions so that people don't think that through my silence I am acquiescing what is being said. Sometimes I am just trying to get under someone's skin.

cookies 'n cream

Golden likes Oreos. I don't really, but I'll eat them. I view them as the anticookie. To me, a perfect cookie is a chewy chocolate chip. Oreos are too crunchy and they stick to the teeth. I do love the creamy filling, and that is why I'll eat Oreos on occasion, but the filling hardly makes up for the drawbacks of the crunchy exterior.I had a conversation at work a few days ago about how good the minty inside of an Oreo is and how annoying the chocolate outside is when it occurred to me. I don't think I have ever heard anyone say anything good about the chocolate part of the Oreo. So, my question to the Oreo lovers is, "Do you like Oreos simply for the minty, creamy filling, or does the chocolate, crunchy outside have some appeal as well?"

password expired

Your password has expired. In an effort to improve security passwords must be changed every 90 days. Please enter a new password.
Password: ok fine

Whitespace characters are not allowed in passwords. Please enter a new password.
Password: okfine

Passwords must contain at least one capitalized letter. Please enter a new password.
Password: OKFine

Passwords must contain at least eight (8) characters. Please enter a new password.
Password: GoldDust

Passwords must contain at least one special character, like an exclamation mark (!) or a pound sign (#). Please enter a new password.
Password: What the...

Whitespace characters are not allowed in passwords. Please enter a new password.
Password: ?!?!?What?!?!?

Passwords must start with an alphanumeric character. Please enter a new password.
Password: What_do_you_want_from_me???

Passwords must not contain more than twenty-five (25) characters. Please enter a new password.
Password: Arrrrrrgggghhh!!!!!

This password has been recently used. New passwords cannot have been used in the past two years. Please enter a new password.
Password: I_give_up!

Your password has been changed! It will expire in 90 days or whenever your network administrator feels like expiring your password for his own amusement. Have a good day!

control

I have been realizing lately that I need to start addressing my control issues. I don't really have problems with controlling others. My problem is that I cannot stand other people controlling me.

I have always had issues when I thought others were trying to manipulate me. I think that is partly just personality and partly comes from some past experiences where I didn't feel like I had any control in my life. No matter where it comes from, the end result is that I take a lot of steps to make sure that I control my fate, so to say. I keep our family budget in line largely because not doing so would leave me at the mercy (and in the control) of others. I am very cautious around people who like to control others because I don't want them meddling in my life. I try very hard to have an understanding of surroundings and predict what is likely to happen so I can avoid being blindsided. I simply do a lot so I don't lose control.

There are a lot of problems with this, not the least of which is that I have a more passive personality. Some probably see that as an invitation to try to control me. Also, the steps I take can sometimes hamper my interactions in life. Finally, nobody is ever in control of 100% of their life, so I'll always be getting irritated at something that is out of my hands. I just can't control that. I'll try to, though.