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.