christmas 2007 trip update

I apologize to anyone who has been expecting updates with the frequency that I normally provide. I have not had too much opportunity to sit down at a computer for long enough to post anything worthwhile for a few days, and I do not expect to have another opportunity until the middle of next week. There is a small chance that I will be able to post something before then, but don't hold your breath.

I leave you with a few updates on my trip.

• NJ has actually done very well in the car so far. He has been a handful when he is out of the car, though, so I think that he is acting out the frustrations I expected to see in the car elsewhere.
• When we have gone anywhere even remotely noteworthy I have forgotten the camera. This happened on a visit to Silver Dollar City and to the Big Mac Museum (which is basically a dolled up McDonald's, but still worth a few pictures).
• When I was growing up my parents couldn't afford to spend much at Christmas time. Now, as an adult, I am amazed that they spend so much on gifts for me and the rest of the family. I make out like a bandit with getting gifts from both Golden's and my family. We probably need to increase our immediate family gift budget just because we receive significantly more than we give.
• I have been reminded one reason why I cannot live in Pennsylvania. I always get car sick if I am a passenger in a car that is travelling around the rolling hills in western Pennsylvania. That is not such a problem in Kansas.
• Everyone keeps reminding me that I have gained some weight. That's what family is for, I guess.

I am sure that either I or Golden will have more information on our trip later, but that is what I have for now.

if the holidays were perfect

Christmas time and summer are the best times for me to see my parents because my dad works with a school system near where they live. He is kept busy even when school is not in session, so if I visited during the school year I would barely see him at all.

This year I am taking six vacation days from work plus two weekends and the two holidays off so we can see Golden's family then my family. As we have been out in the cold some this weekend I have been asking myself why such a major holiday is held when it is so cold outside.

It almost feels like a waste of a vacation day to take it when the temperature is about twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit outside. There are so many wonderful spring and summer days I spend in the office, but when it is freezing outside is the time that I travel to see family.

I think that the holidays should be concentrated more in warmer months (to accommodate me, of course). Christmas and New Year's Day should be celebrated on consecutive days in May. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President's Day, and Memorial Day should also be celebrated that week so American workers can get a full week off in Spring.

If we had this setup, I could have sixteen Spring days off in a row for the price of five vacation days. That would be time worth taking.

dumb moments in business

I don't have anything too original this weekend. We leave to see family for the holidays tomorrow morning, so rather than taking the time to compose something fresh I am leaning on an article I read recently.

Fortune posted its list of 101 dumbest business moments of 2007, though I have to say that calling all of them business moments is quite a stretch. Even so, here are some of my favorites.

#7: Toilets Combust
A Japanese company named Toto offered repairs to thousands of its customers' toilets after three of them catch fire.

#13: Not Such a Small World
The "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland has to be closed so that the water channel that passenger boats travel on can be deepened. This has become necessary because the ride has been getting stuck when loaded with heavier passengers.

#22: Death of Cold
A funeral home in Scotland has to address reports that employees used the ashes of some of the dearly departed to spread over slippery sidewalk ice. The employees didn't go as far as Keith Richards (#28) claimed he did, though, when he stated that he snorted his father's ashes.

#38: Is Your PC Running Too Well?
An IT security consultant takes out a Google ad with the text below. Over four hundred people click on it.

Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!

#51: They Took Candy from Her Too
When a nine-year-old girl sent a letter to Steve Jobs with ideas of how to improve the iPod Nano the response was a letter from Apple's legal counsel telling her not to send any more letters.

#53: Ouch
A Japanese arm wrestling game breaks three people's arms.

#58: Which Border Should We Head To?
Taco Bell advertises in Mexico City that it does not pretend to serve Mexican food.

#59: They Made It up in Volume
Radiohead puts an album online and asks people to pay what they think the music is worth. Less than forty percent of people who download pay anything.

#66: Your Other Left
Three different patients have operations on the wrong side of their heads in one hospital in one year.

#69: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
A whistleblower alerts Exelon Nuclear to people working on a security contract sleeping on the job. Exelon then gets rid of everyone on the contract, including the whistleblower.

#75: Can't Get Rid of the Old Man Smell
A homebuyer who got the house from a bank who had repossessed the house finds the previous owner mummified inside the house.

#87: It's in the Bag
SkyWest is forced to apologize to a passenger who had to urinate into an air sickness bag when he was disallowed from using the restroom.

#99: She Must Not Have a Sub-Prime Loan
The senior vice-president of marketing at Century 21 predicts that the 2007 housing market will be one of the best in the past 30 or 40 years.

diamond and the rough

I don't know where in the country specific commercials have been showing, but one that has been driving me nuts is a Jared Jewelry commercial. In the commercial a woman explains that her new ring comes from Jared's and everyone makes a big deal about it and repeats, "He went to Jared." I looked all over online for a copy of this commercial, but it must be so bad that no one wants to upload it to a video website.

Most of the reason the commercial irritates me is that it is so overacted that it is embarrassing to watch. Beyond that, though, it does not seem to fit the target audience. In theory, the market for jewelry is mostly composed of men buying for their better half. I think that most of the Jared commercials I have seen would make more men not want to go to Jared than go to Jared.

I can imagine a commercial from a Jared competitor where two guys are talking. One would say, "He went to Jared," and the other would respond with, "Bummer." That commercial would probably be more effective than the current Jared commercials.

I am fortunate that Golden, despite her name, is not huge into jewelry. So, I do not feel pressure to buy diamonds every time I see this commercial. I will point out that, so I do not sound like a horrible husband, if she decides she does want jewelry at some point that will not be a big deal. The commercial would even be even more annoying if Golden liked to show off jewelry, though.

I think that, from a marketing perspective, Helzberg has a better idea with their latest commercial, which is shown below. This is a commercial that is well-designed for its target audience, though it may not be well-designed to it's secondary audience of the women who will be receiving the jewelry.



I can see how this commercial would make some women feel like the man was going through the motions in getting jewelry and also going through the motions in other areas of life. If the jewelry does not make the gift recipient feel special, then it is not a good gift.

So maybe, depending on your perspective, both commercials are rough.

* Note: I modified this post a little to address concerns made in the comments.

caviar dreams

A couple of days ago an executive in our department sent a big gift basket to the people in my office. It contained a lot of the typical stuff: biscotti, cheese and crackers, summer sausage, chocolate, etc. One part of that et cetera that I did not expect was a jar of caviar.

I have made it no secret that I am not a seafood person. I will eat seafood if I have to, but when I do eat it I typically end up choking it down. If given the choice I will almost always avoid even the few types of seafood that I do not dislike.

I was faced with the question of whether I would have some caviar so that I could say I have had it, or I would avoid the seafood because I am not a fan. I resisted for a while, but reasoned that I would probably not have many chances to have free caviar in my life. After dragging my feet on the idea, I finally scraped some on a cracker and ate it. I do not know if all caviar tastes the same, but this caviar tasted exactly like what it was—salty, raw fish.

This all reminded me of a question that I have always had. Do people really like caviar, or do people just say they like it because it is a high-class food? Furthermore, is caviar considered high-class food because people with sophisticated palates enjoy it or just because it is difficult and expensive to acquire? It blows my mind that someone somewhere once decided that collecting fish eggs and selling them at exorbitant prices as food would work as a business plan. It further blows my mind that the plan actually did work. There truly is no accounting for taste.

say you need love

Recently at our young adult group at church we were asked to think of a time when we had an "Aha!" moment about knowing God loves us. Immediately, a guy pointed out that he never really needed an "Aha!" moment because he never really worried that God did not love him. This did not get a good reaction in the group, but as I thought about it I really understood what he was talking about.

There have not been many times in my life when I worried whether anyone loved me. There may not have been any. I think part of this is that I have always known that there are people who love me. I think a much bigger part of this is that I do not have as strong a need to be loved as many other people do. Though I am sure there are exceptions, I think this is generally a gender issue where women are more likely to want to know that God loves them than men do.

I noticed that when guys in the group talked about when they determined that God loved them, it was not really about love. It had more to do with God having their back than anything else. If I had provided any examples, I would have provided one of these typical guy responses. I really felt like the men and women in the room were answering two different questions when they discussed how they knew that God loved them.

I think this can be enlightening regarding some of the general differences between men and women. I would probably never have even thought to ask the question of when did you determine that God loves you. To some others it may be the most important question in the world.

medicine cabinet surprise

A couple of nights ago I heard Golden give a startled shout from the bathroom. In our house that usually means that she either saw an insect or spider or that something fell onto Golden from a shelf or cabinet. Both of these are relatively common occurrences.

Because I hear this frequently, I barely react any more when Golden makes that noise. This time, though, was a little different. Golden walked out to the living room and informed me that my shaving cream can leaked in the medicine cabinet. This is not something I have ever seen happen.

On the plus side, this provided a good opportunity to reassess why we had some of the items in the medicine cabinet, and throw some stuff away. The picture speaks for itself.

have to believe

"You have to believe [the Bible], and you hate it. I don't have to believe it, and I think it's beautiful."- Leslie Burke (Bridge to Terabithia)

This past weekend I watched Bridge to Terabithia, since the commercials for the movie had intrigued me. The movie is well written, though I think it is kind of dark for a kids' movie. It is really more of an older kids' movie. Also, I have some problem with the fact that the movie almost inadvertently takes a salvation-by-works point of view.

The above quote from the movie really stuck with me. The protagonist is a boy in the fifth or sixth grade named Jesse, and Leslie is his new neighbor who quickly becomes his best friend. Leslie goes with Jesse's family to church, and on the way back she issues the quote above when Jesse's little sister states that God sends people who do not believe in the Bible to Hell. This is specifically the case regarding the Crucifixion story.

The reason the quote resonates with me is that I can apply it to the way I think. I hate to have to believe anything. When someone tries to get me to believe something I want very much to disagree with that person. I can fully understand the concept of failing to see the beauty in Scripture due to being told that I have to believe a certain way about that Scripture. It would be completely believable to simply be blind to the love that is supposed to emanate from stories like that of the Crucifixion.

I wonder if many people fail to see the beauty in the Crucifixion because of the way the belief is forced on them. Is the good news of the Gospel completely dulled to many minds by the requirement to believe? Even if this is what causes some people to miss the point of the most important passages of Scripture, is there even anything that we can do about it? It is a lot to think about considering it came from a Disney movie.

iced

No, I didn't take the above picture. It is from WikiMedia Commons.

We moved into our house in the summer of 2003, and I still had the ice storm from 2002 fresh in my mind. One of the first things we did was to hire someone to trim the trees in the front yard so that they would survive the next ice storm and not damage the house, cars, etc. With that move, I figured I had covered any major issues we may experience in an ice storm.

On Monday night the power went out on the house for a few minutes, then went back on, then went off, then back on again. This pattern repeated for at least a half hour at random intervals. At this point I realized that there was one thing I really had not accounted for. I did not know what we were going to do if we didn't have electricity for a long period of time.

While our furnace uses natural gas, the fan on the furnace uses electric, so the house would be cold even if the furnace stayed lit. This could be good in that it might keep the food in the fridge from spoiling. It would also be bad, though, because it could cause our pipes to freeze and make life with a seventeen-month-old difficult. While I was lying in bed, I decided that if we lost electricity for an extended time, we would have to find a hotel room in whatever town in the area still had electricity and stay there until we were online again.

I think I overdramatized the situation in my mind because this is a situation I have not dealt with, so I do not really know all the things I am supposed to do if the power goes out. Fortunately, this time it wasn't an issue. I am very glad we don't live in St. Joseph.

achoouch

Over the weekend I have dealt with a cold. Because of this, I have been reminded about something that has been happening to me lately. At times when I am already feeling achy, strong sneezes make my shoulders and arms hurt pretty strongly. This has only started happening in the past year or two, but it is very noticeable.

It is not really avoidable either. If I hold in the sneeze, it still hurts. If I sneeze multiple times in a row it hurts more.

I started thinking this weekend that maybe I am not the only person to experience this, and maybe this is something that I should investigate. I did not find much definitive information, but I did find that I am not alone and that it probably has something to do with specific nerves getting jostled or pinched at the moment of the sneeze.

So, the question of the day is, is there anything strange about your sneezes? Do yours hurt? Do yours sound weird? Are you able to control whether you sneeze or not?

give it up

"Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it. Beethoven went deaf. By our standards a mean joke; the monkey trick of a spiteful imbecile."- C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

Someone at work whom I know rather well went to the hospital this week for pancreatitis. It is possible that he will not be allowed to drink any more, which is something that he likes to do in his recreation time. This wouldn't be a big deal to me, but to him I am sure it is. Note that I have no intention of making any value judgments about alcohol consumption here because I have a different purpose for this post.

It seems that when someone really likes something, that this puts that individual at a greater risk for losing that thing. I doubt many people would disagree with this. While I don't believe it was Beethoven's fault he went deaf, I have heard that music lovers are particularly susceptible to tinnitus because constant sound can impact hearing. People with a sweet tooth are more likely to develop diabetes later in life. Athletes often injure the parts of their bodies they most need to participate in their sport.

Probably the things that will do me in is my love for salt and red meat. I often crave salty foods and/or beef products (though I am not a fan of corned beef, interestingly enough). I am sure that there will be implications for this if I am not careful, though I do not know if they are as bad as having an inflamed pancreas. I expect that I will be told to trim salt and red meat from my diet some day, and I just hope that day is far in the future.

I presume, though I do not know this for sure, that God built our bodies so that we cannot handle large amounts of the things we like so that we don't make those things too important in our lives. I can't eat a steak and french fries every day if I want to be able to enjoy life beyond the age of fifty, since I do know it will eventually impact my quality of life. Even so, it would be normal for the person no longer allowed to partake in the source of their pleasure to question the wisdom of a God who creates something enjoyable then takes it away.

While I do not currently question God's wisdom in this matter, that could just be because I can still eat steak.

broken

I am hard on my stuff. I have fried multiple XBox controllers, power supplies, hard drives, and other components. Not only that, my spectacular record is even continuing as of late.

My laptop has been acting up over the last few months. I know what the issue is, and it is still usable. It just makes a loud beep when I start it, and one of the network adapters does not work. It is still under warranty until mid-January, so I have procrastinated in addressing this until last night. The warranty company agreed over the phone to have me ship the laptop to them to fix it. This will be the second issue for the laptop that I have needed to get fixed under warranty.

Since I need to back up the data on the laptop before shipping it out to be repaired, I started copying files to an external hard drive I bought a few months ago. It stopped working within a few hours of use.

I must have the opposite of the Midas touch with electronics. Everything I touch becomes worthless. I just wish my stuff would actually keep working like I expect it to.

take a cold shower

This is the time of the year when I start to notice that the house is not perfectly warm when I wake up. So to combat this, I like to hurry through my morning teeth brushing and shaving to get into my warm shower. It is one of the few of my typical morning rituals that I look forward to.

A couple of days ago I had a rude awakening when I hopped into the shower. The water was not cold, but it certainly was not warm enough to offset the temperature of the air around me. I turned the nob for the cold water all the way off, but the water still did not warm up. This was a disturbing turn of events since we just replaced our water heater a month ago.

Golden later noted that NJ had for a brief moment gotten to the water heater temperature control nob and twisted it. She was not sure what the temperature was supposed to be set to, so she could not just return it to its previous setting. Unfortunately, I don't know the right setting either.

So, until I determine that my morning shower is comfortable, I will be bumping the heat up on our water heater every day. It's a hassle, but it is worth the effort.

hair bands that i like

I know a few people are going to misread that title.

For years now I have had an urge that some would probably find shameful. It's actually a bit of a surprise that I am not embarrassed about it. Maybe I will be now that I am sharing it. I have a thing for hair clips, hair bands, and scrunchies.

For some reason, I find most of the devices designed for girls' hair incredibly entertaining. Give me a banana clip and a hair band (not the 80s rock version) and I can be enthralled for hours.

I think all of this is due to my fidgety nature. I also like fidgeting with office supplies like staple removers, rubber bands, and paper clips. The difference is that few people care if I am playing with a staple remover. Some might be uncomfortable seeing me play with a scrunchy.

The reason I was thinking about this is that Golden just got a couple of new hair clips a couple of days ago, and so I expect to be busy for the next couple of days.

no melancholy muse

Over the past week I have been in a melancholy mood. It isn't full-fledged depression or anything like that. My mood has just been a little more dreary than usual lately, and not even for many good reasons.

This isn't a post where I am asking people to feel bad for Dust. I'd prefer my readers wouldn't because it's part of that up and down process that most people go through. I just am always a bit confused about what to post about when I am in a funk. Few things sap my creative drive more than when I am little down, so I usually don't have the tenacity to put much effort into an involved monologue.

Another problem is that most of the ideas I come up with when I am in a mood are more cynical than I should be. I don't want to use this site as just an outlet for me to whine through because no one really wants to read that, except possibly in the condition that the whining is presented creatively.

This week it worked out that I had three ready-made topics to type about, so it there weren't any problems. I did not really have to put much thought into posting this week. Tonight I drew a blank, though. I am sure it is not obvious.