stress

A while back I (probably stupidly) posted my "Big Five" scores and I later announced that I had determined to try to reduce my "Neuroticism" or "Need for stability" score on the test. Tonight I had a revelation that my score might not be truly indicative of how I handle stress. While I am certainly highly-strung, I don't think that I go to the extremes that the test implies that I do.

One of the classes that I am taking now is called Managing People and it requires that I, again, take the Big Five assessment. This time, however, I had to take an assessment that is designed to be used in the workplace for assessing employees and potential employees so it has some slightly different measures. As has been typical, I tested extremely high in having a "Need for stability." I am not talking in the top quarter of testers high. I am talking in the top five percent high.

I take two issues with my test score. First, my interpretation of this score is that this should indicate that I should be curled in a ball weeping under my desk or ready to punch someone at the first sign of stress. Second, I do not believe that if I were in a group of twenty randomly selected people that I would be the most easily stressed. I know many people who are more easily stressed than I am. I think that what is happening is that I have been told so frequently and believed so strongly that I am highly strung that I tend to relay that on the personality tests.

This all occurred to me tonight when I was watching The Amazing Race. One team had a setback and got all upset, and one team member threatened to quit the game. That actually happens relatively frequently in the game. While I would be stressed in that situation and I might need to step away from the situation for a moment to de-stress a bit, I cannot fathom being so frustrated by the situation in question that I would just give up. I also cannot fathom it hampering me much in completing the task in question.

My current job involves customer service as have a few previous jobs I have had. This means that there are occasionally stressful situations of varying degrees that pop up, and I can get worked up about them. I have mentioned before that this typically results in better customer service because I am motivated to resolve the issue quickly. I don't think I get to the stress level that I see from the people on TV, though. Maybe that's just because I don't have to witness the results of my stress?

Regardless, I am going to make a concerted effort to calm down going forward. The results from the last test I took recommended the book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, so I might give that a try. Yet another self-improvement book to read.

applosoft or micropple

I am going to take a bit of a chance here. While I do not anticipate applying to work at Microsoft or Apple any time in the near future, who really knows what types of acquisitions could occur to cause me to be employed by one of the companies by default. If either of these companies ever does acquire the company I work for expect this post to be immediately replaced by a glowing description of the company and the executives who run the company in question.

Quite a few years ago I used to have a strong dislike for Microsoft as a company. This largely stemmed from the fact that I felt like I did not have the realistic alternative to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. While I do not believe today that Microsoft is an altruistic company, I am not nearly as bothered today by it as I was in the past. For one thing, I have learned since that technical markets tend to naturally gravitate toward monopolies more than most other types of markets. Also, while Microsoft owns monopolies in two markets now, it is not doing a good job at the moment of replacing those monopolies with monopolies in different markets. This puts Microsoft in a very bad strategic position five or ten years from now if things do not change.

I now see Apple as the new Microsoft. This does not mean I have particular disdain for Apple. It just puzzles me why so many of the same people who hated Microsoft for its business practices have a love for Apple. Apple's strategy is almost exactly the same as what Microsoft's has been. Gain a monopoly in a market (iTunes, Windows) and use that monopoly to extract high margins from customers who can't reasonably go elsewhere. Again, I am not saying that Apple's strategy is immoral or anything like that, but rather I am saying that almost everything that a person could have hated about Microsoft they could hate about Apple as well.

stopping to smell

I am a goal-oriented person. I am not someone who looks forward to stopping and smelling the roses. This is good for some areas of life and bad for others, as is most any personality quirk.

As I have been in school for what feels like a lifetime (neither NJ nor CD were even born yet when I started), every single semester has seen me with a narrow-minded focus of just making it to the end. Once I get to the end of a semester I usually have a few days of feeling real good about being done with the semester, then I get into a routine and don't appreciate the reduced responsibilities.

This coming week starts the second half of my last semester, so I am officially focused on surviving through the first week in May. That is not necessarily good because I have other things in my life that are more important than school, even in my last semester.

While I think that God gives us certain traits for a reason, I think that I need to learn how to appreciate living in the process more rather than only having a single-minded focus on reaching the end of the process. I need to stop and smell the roses, or whatever it is that I am supposed to smell on my journey. This probably makes more sense in other things I do in life besides education, but that is where it is relevant now. So, for the next month-and-a-half I will be making an effort to stop and smell the pencils. There aren't any roses in most classrooms.

dogged to get a dog

Apparently, I am just about the only guy in my office who is not an animal person. Almost everyone else has a dog. There have been times I have wanted a dog, but that was when I was in sixth grade. My needs, wants, and pet peeves (pun not intended, but happily accepted) are different now.

I am mostly surprised by the fact that so few people feel the same way that I do. I don't have anything against a pet like a dog, but the pros just don't outweigh the cons. I decided to make a list of the pros and cons of getting a dog. The following is that list.

Pros:

• Companionship: This would make sense if I spent a lot of time alone. I don't, though.
• Unconditional Love: I threw this in because someone mentioned it as a reason to have a dog. Again, it might be a factor if I lived alone, but even then it wouldn't strongly influence me.
• Altruistic Endorphin Rush: By this I mean that it makes most people feel good when they help someone else. I think that I would feel better doing something like volunteering at a homeless shelter than taking care of a dog, though. Humans are much more important to me than animals.
• Security: No doubt, a barking dog can frighten away an intruder. I would not be getting a very large dog if I ever got one, though, so the benefit may be negligible. Are intruders scared off by yorkies or terriers?
• Kids Like Animals: This is the only reason I would consider getting a dog or a cat at this stage in my life. NJ does not appear to want a dog right now, though. CD will probably press for a dog or a cat when she is older.

Cons:

• Dog Food: It's smelly and expensive (enough).
• Dog Poop: It's smelly and requires me to let the dog out at specific times of the day and to scoop.
• Dog Smells: Other than the food and poop, there's the breath and other odors that are difficult (but not usually impossible) to extract from carpets and furniture.
• Cold: I don't want to have to take the dog out in the cold.
• Noise: Dogs sometimes decide to make a lot of noise at very inopportune times. A family I know has had the police called on them before because they could not keep their dogs quiet one night. This is not a problem with all dogs, but it cannot always be trained out of the dog. I would not feel good about having to resort to a shock collar.
• Scheduling: The dog either has to go on trips, be left in a kennel, or we have to get someone to agree to take care of it.
• Securing the Dogs: I know a lot of people whose dogs have gotten away. Not only does this mean that the dog has to be tracked down, but it also means that I would be legally responsible if the dog attacked anyone or damaged anything. One of Golden and my friends had a dog get loose and get hit by a car, and that person was responsible for the automotive repair costs because it was the dog's fault.
• Health: Simply put, I do not want to have to make the choice of putting Fluffy to sleep or paying for his or her operation.
• General Upkeep: Frankly, I already have to maintain enough things around the house and I have a difficult enough time keeping up. Having a pet means that there is one more thing that has to be maintained. In and of itself it is not a big deal. When taken with my other responsibilities, though, this is a serious drawback to me.

Obviously, I have a bias against having a pet, but I know that to many people their pets are part of what gives them purpose in life. This is not meant to disparage pet people, but rather to lay out my argument for why it would not make sense for me to get a pet.

Since I am a bit biased, does anyone have reasons that I did not consider for why it would make sense to get a dog or other pet? Conversely, does anyone agree with me?

ending sentences with prepositions

A while back I claimed that I thought the rule about not ending sentences with prepositions was stupid. It has always gotten under my skin because the process of working around this "rule" requires using ridiculously awkward sentences. While I obviously still agree with my earlier assessment, I am a bit wiser on the topic now.

A year or two ago I composed my rationale for why having prepositions at the end of a sentence is not a big deal and I sent it to a few coworkers who care about grammar. While I have since found that my below rationalization is not technically accurate, the following are the arguments I put forth.

From my perspective, the acceptable sentence-ending preposition can come in three forms.

Adverb

In this case the purpose of the preposition is to modify a verb, adjective, or noun. For example, in the sentence below "about" modifies "wrote."

"I am interested in the topic you wrote about."

Rewording the sentence could make it more "correct," but it adds no value to the communication of the idea other than forcing the sentence structure to fit better into the Latin mold. It actually makes the sentence quite awkward. The rewrite would probably look like the following.

"I am interest in the topic about which you wrote."

Broken Prepositional Phrase

In this case the prepositional phrase exists, but the preposition comes after the noun. This probably overlaps the other two forms. In the example below "where" is actually part of the prepositional phrase.

"Where do you come from?"

The fix below is just to move the preposition to the beginning of the prepositional phrase. Do you really believe that the following is an improvement?

"From where do you come?"

Implied Prepositional Phase

In this case the purpose can be described as laziness, but that is still an acceptable rationale in English. The following sentence is an example I found online.

"Get in!"

In this case, this is short for "Get in the car!" Something worth noting is that the grammar gods appear to care about the missing (and implied) prepositional phrase a lot more than the missing (and implied) subject. If you are anal about the missing prepositional phrase, why not require that people utter the sentence as follows?

"You, get in the car!"

It is my opinion that the prepositional phrase rule only exists because this is the way we have always done it. This is how Latin is structured, so this is the mold into which we are going to force English. If those who enforce "right" and "wrong" grammar cared more about usability and communication than fitting within the Latin mold, then this rule would not exist.

I recently listened to an old Grammar Girl podcast episode that addressed the issue in much simpler terms. Most of the time that a preposition is placed at the end of a sentence it is part of a verbal phrase and acts as part of the verb in the sentence rather than as a preposition. So, technically the verb is at the end of the sentence in these cases rather than the preposition.

After all of the effort I put into rationalizing why a preposition at the end of a sentence is acceptable, it is a bit deflating to know that I was right for the wrong reasons. I will claim that I was at least close with my noting that the prepositions often function as adverbs, but I still did not get the explanation correct. At least I am assured now that I have it figured out.

let's talk about us

There are three parts to this post. They could have been standalone blog posts, but they are somewhat related and posting them separately would make it look like I am in a rut.

First Part:

When Golden and I were first married I used to joke a lot about the cliche couple where she wants to talk about "us" and he wants nothing to do with it. I don't know why I found that specific cliche so funny, but I did. In reality, I am the more likely person to want to talk about "us."

I have always felt like my brain didn't really work the same way everyone else's did, so that has made me fascinated with how different people think. Even more so, once I was in a serious relationship then married I was amazed by how we come from completely different angles at things. I grew up my whole life thinking of the female brain as similar to the male brain with just a few preferences wired differently. While Golden and I think alike in a lot of things, our brains are very obviously more foundationally different than a few hardwired preferences.

I feel I have some pretty good reasons for wanting to understand relationships and the differences between men and women. First of all, it only makes sense that I would want to understand Golden and what makes her happy. Second, and almost as important, is the fact that I want to help NJ and CH have healthy relationships when they are old enough, and it has been my observation that the people most unhappy in relationships are among those who least understand the opposite sex.

Because of all of this, I have discovered that one of my recent guilty pleasures has been relationship-oriented books, especially those that discuss the differences between the sexes. The last book I read was actually one that Golden and I did together that I have heard so many other people discuss: The 5 Love Languages. While I found the book fascinating and it did start some very good discussions between Golden and me, I actually felt like I didn't perfectly fit into any of the five love languages discussed. For the purposes of the book I tested as requiring quality time. I did not feel that the description of someone who needs quality time perfectly described me, but I enjoyed going through the book anyway. A guilty pleasure is a guilty pleasure.

I am already figuring out what my next relationship/differences between the sexes book will be after I graduate this May. That's just one of the reasons that I am hopeful for a good summer.

Second Part:

Because I have historically struggled to understand what is romantic I subscribed to the the romantic tip of the week at TheRomantic.com a few months back. I found the website through a book of romance ideas. Since it is a romance mailing list I would expect that mostly men in need of ideas would be on the list. Apparently, I would expect wrong because the mailing a few days ago had an advertisement for a book for women wanting more out of their relationships. The ad intrigued me enough for the reasons that I have already mentioned in this post that I clicked on it and read through the page advertising the book. There is a lot there that I almost posted about, but I decided to limit it to the following slightly reduced paragraph from the website.

"If you're like most women, you probably love talking to your girlfriends about your relationship troubles, and -- yikes! -- asking them for relationship advice... unless she herself has a successful relationship with a man (very important!) -- it's unwise to take relationship advice or tips from your girlfriend (or your mother, sister, cousin or aunt, for that matter)."

I had to post this because, while it is a pretty obvious hard sell, there is one thing in there that is kind of true. No disrespect meant to single folks, but single friends who are the opposite sex of the person you are interested in are rarely the people to turn to for serious relationship advice. The longer you are in a healthy relationship the more accurate a picture you have of what are proper expectations from the relationship. It's next to impossible to give good relationship advice without a clear understanding of what expectations are realistic. Bad advice could very well lead you down either the path of expecting too much or the path of settling for too little.

Third Part:

I cannot count how many marriages I have seen where I think that those two people are fortunate to have found each other because no one else would have put up with (fill in the blank for him) or (fill in the blank for her). I am wondering if this is a cause or an effect. Are people very prone to find others who can deal with their quirks or am I just noticing the quirks that weren't addressed because they weren't that important to the spouse? Even more weird: Are the things that I think are so undesirable actually the same things that attracted their spouse in the first place?

I think wondering about the obvious quirks is probably a bit unfair, though. If I use myself as an example, I would not be overly modest if I were to say that anyone who thinks that I am a catch is either crazy or the one person who married me. Everyone has issues that make them challenging to live with and mine would probably drive most people batty in ways they can only dream. My very last roommate in college told me as I was moving out, "You're a good friend but a horrible roommate. You probably think the same of me." I did.* One of the best things about a good marriage is that you've found someone who will put up with your stuff if you can just find a way to put up with theirs.

* Since former roommates of mine read this blog on occasion I should note that this conversation did not happen with anyone who knows about this blog. I am quite sure that the person who said this wouldn't mind me posting it, though.

cars in the future

I will warn everyone ahead of time that this post is basically my prediction for the future of transportation. I can see that interesting some people and severely boring others. If you are bored by speculation regarding the future of cars, then don't bother reading this post. Don't you wish everything I wrote came with this disclaimer?

Everyone knows that Toyota has been in the news lately for problems with breaking. For people who own a Toyota vehicle this must be a bit nerve-wracking. For some people adamantly against the idea of buying a car assembled in the United States by a non-unionized Japanese company, I think there is a bit of restrained glee (I decided not to use the word "schadenfreude" because the word seems pretentious). While a lot of people have gotten the idea that this proves the reputation of Toyota's manufacturing excellence a farce, I have to disagree.

Since the issues sound like they are due to very quirky behaviors with the software, this has very little to do with Toyota's ability to assemble a quality car. Software development is a whole different world from car development. Because of this, situations like this one with Toyota and future similar incidents are almost inevitable. As long as we rely on large amounts of software to automate functionality in our vehicles, and we will more and more in future years for economic reasons, inevitable defects will appear. Just due to random chance, some will impact important functions such as the car's ability to stop. This is just speculation, but it sounds like automotive software issues are more difficult to diagnose and fix as well because Toyota sounds to me like it is stalling until the software issue is identified and addressed.

As someone who has spent several years devoted to supporting software and interacting with the support staffs of other software companies I feel I have some qualification to compare expected standards for software compared to automotives. Software is typically held to a lower standard. For example, if a defect makes your browser crash and you have to reboot that is irritating, but it is not entirely unexpected. If your car steering fails to function one day while you are on the highway because of a defect that is much more unexpected and serious. While a Windows defect could cause Microsoft customers some pain a defect in a Prius could cost a customer his or her life.

As an example of what I am talking about, part of the reason that the things NASA builds are so expensive is that there is almost no tolerance for defects. It is very difficult to fix something that is millions of miles away, so it has to be nearly perfect. Even with these standards, NASA has had many serious failures over the years with both hardware and software, and I would argue that as stupid as many of the defects were, having them was quite nearly unavoidable. It is likewise unavoidable that some software glitch is going to cause some serious automotive issues that take lives.

I have considered this quite a bit. It only makes sense that the next big advance in automobiles will be self-driving vehicles. Technically, it is close to possible to build a car that can drive itself already. Prototypes have been made, but they are not anywhere near safe enough to use on the road. The technology simply is not mature enough, but most of the remaining research involves details rather than undeveloped technology.

I expect that the technology will start with semi trucks since the drivers can still take over the vehicle from auto-pilot if there are problems. Eventually, though, the technology will become advanced enough that no truck driver will be needed in the vehicle even as an emergency co-pilot. The day that the technology is mature enough to allow for self-driven cars unmonitored by a human will be a good day for consumers because of cheaper shipping, but it will be a very bad day for anyone who makes a living largely based on their having a CDL. On that day school buses will not have drivers, but rather just an adult who keeps order. Domestic airlines will lose a lot of business because it will be easier and cheaper to rent a car equipped with a bed overnight and sleep while the car does the driving than it will be to deal with the hassle of a flight. Hotels that are not destination hotels will be hurt as well for the same reason: That no one will need to stop for a rest midway through their trip. This should also reduce the need to expand roads and lessen our dependence on oil because an automated car uses less gas than a manually driven car does and can drive closer to other vehicles (reducing its road footprint). All of this is almost technically possible now (or at least within five years), but it will probably not happen for the next twenty because of the problems that Toyota is having now.

What I expect will happen is that small bits of automated functionality will be introduced into cars slowly, such as Lexus' automated parallel parking. Even though the current pace of adding automation to cars is relatively slow, it will get even slower because sooner or later another software issue like what Toyota is seeing will appear and another CEO will be called before Congress to get chewed out regarding his inability to fix some issue that no one entirely understands but that is causing random accidents. This will happen a handful of times and each time it does it will slow the deployment of new automated functionality to a standstill.

Eventually, though, the technology will mature and the next generation will tell their kids about the good old days when cars came with steering wheels, gas pedals, and bucket seats. Not only that, we also had to drive barefoot through the snow uphill both ways...