looking forward to winter

I remember as a kid the anticipation I felt toward the Christmas holiday.  The little Advent calendar seemed so long.  The twenty-five days leading up to the holiday seemed to take forever.  Of course, at that early age what really excited me about Christmas was the prospect of toys, time off school, and an opportunity to play with cousins.  The time felt long in part because my responsibilities leading up to the holiday were minimal.  I certainly did not appreciate all of the responsibilities my parents had in the time leading up to the holidays.

After all of my excitement, it was over so fast.  I enjoyed the next few days of playing with the new toys, but the sense of anticipation was gone.  December 26 was always bittersweet.  The next week when schoolwork started again was downright horrible.

In the past several years I have seen December as a bit of a chore.  There are a lot of things that have to be done for the holiday now including gift-buying, extra parties, traveling, and coordinating schedules.  That has made opinion of the holidays a bit less festive.  I have an advantage today, though, that I did not have as a kid, and that is that the time after Christmas day is actually quite enjoyable.

What I look the most forward to is undirected down time that I can enjoy how I like.  What I am realizing is that, while the time leading up to Christmas sucks that up and destroys it, there is more of that after Christmas.  Like when I was a kid, I typically get some time off around the holidays and can enjoy that time.  Unlike when I was a kid, I do not have a semester of homework to look forward to in January.  Beyond that, a lot of the things (both that I do and do not enjoy) that take my time are less of a factor in January than in other times of year.  There is no football that I care about as a Lions fan, and fantasy football does not stretch into the playoffs.  There is no mowing or lawn care in general.  There are fewer outdoor activities that I am likely to participate in.  There are more evenings when I can enjoy a movie with Golden.  It is really the perfect opportunity to enjoy down time with movies, games, or a hobby.  I have been clear that I generally do not like cold weather, but I don't have to be out in the cold to enjoy some of the side-effects of the weather.

This line of thinking came about because I am now realizing that this is the third December in a row where I am feeling optimistic about how much I expect to enjoy the upcoming winter months.  That seemed unlike me. It appears to be an outgrowth of the fact that I know what it is like to have work and school and a lot of other things ahead of me for the upcoming semester, and so with fewer things on my plate I expect to be happier.  This could become a trend, and so I could be modifying my negative attitude about the winter in future years.  Who knows, maybe I will even start enjoying the cold.

c64 batman

When I was a kid our family had a Commodore 64 computer, and most of the games I played were on that machine.  Of everything that I played, though, the game that probably had the greatest impact on me was Batman: The Caped Crusader.  I was really into the old campy TV series, and the game was more advanced than most Commodore 64 games, so it made sense that I would like it.  It also held some value as one of the gifts for me that my dad had picked out.

As much as I liked the game, I was never able to complete either of the two missions, one against the Penguin and one against the Joker.  In both situations I was able to get right to the end, but was never able to figure out the last thing to do to complete the mission.  I spent hours trying to figure it out, and never to any avail.  In the years since I have often wondered if I was missing something or if the game had been broken.  What I would not have given for the ability to get a game walkthrough like is available online for most games today.

In thinking about game walkthroughs recently occurred to me that I could probably get a walkthrough of completing the game online, and I quickly found some YouTube videos of someone completing each mission.  That completing both missions combined lasts less than twenty minutes is not a reassurance to my gaming abilities as a sixth-grader.

I'm including the videos below of the game for my reference rather than anyone else's because there is no reason anyone who did not play the game would care.  However, I still wish it would have taken the person playing this less than twenty minutes.

Joker, Part 1:


Joker, Part 2:


Penguin:

chuckles the car

For about a month the image below is part of what I have seen from my office.

What has stuck out to me is that white vehicle in the middle of the photo.While the driver of that vehicle has not been parked facing my office like this in the last few weeks, for several weeks he or she parked backed into the space so that the car constantly caught my eye due to a similarity my mind cannot ignore.

As I mentioned a while back, I have seen Toy Story 3 many times in the last two years, as it is one of our kids' favorites.  One of the characters is a clown toy named Chuckles.  All I can think about when I see this car from a distance is how much it reminds me of Chuckles.

Are there similar things that show up in your everyday life that constantly reminds you of something or someone else?

rolling in the deep

In what appears to be an embarrassingly growing trend in me liking songs about women standing up to or wishing revenge on their exes (What's that about?), I'm finding that I'm somewhat drawn to Adele's ridiculously popular Rolling in the Deep.  The lyrics are not written for me at all, but for whatever reason I enjoy the song.



I have every reason to not like the song.  I think it's the anthem of a woman who does not understand the role she had in someone leaving her, so she wants to stew in revenge mode.  One line from the song, emphasized below, gives away the singer's mistaken perspective.

The scars of your love remind me of us,
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all.
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless,
I can't help feeling,

We could have had it all,
Rolling in the deep,
You had my heart inside your hand,
And you played it to the beat.

This hearkens back to something that I noted that I have learned in the time since being married.  Many phrases mean something completely different to a typical woman than a typical man.  In my opinion the "it all" that they "could have had" has almost no connection with whatever the guy who left her wanted in the relationship in the first place, and that is why he left her.  He didn't understand her and she didn't understand him.  She had some fantasy about the relationship that she assumed had meaning to him, but that he probably did not even know existed, and so things played out the way they do when two people don't understand each other because they're only concerned about fulfilling their own irrational fantasies.

I am torn on enjoying this song for this reason.  Vengeance fantasies feed off self-righteousness, and this song is definitely a revenge fantasy, but in this case it seems screamingly obvious that the self-righteousness is unfounded.  The woman isn't without the man because she is too good for him.  She is without him, can't figure out why, and feels self-superior because she is stuck in the mindset that her fantasies should have been their fantasies.

I think that a lot of the popularity for this song comes from the fact that a lot of people—while it would be women in this case men are just as guilty—see relationships as ways to meet their own fantasies without concern for the other person's needs.  When the other person either takes advantage of the him or her using the fantasy or breaks up recognizing how much effort the relationship is going to be, a song like this speaks to the person whose heart and fantasies have been broken.

This is probably too much thought to give to a pop song, isn't it?

political drug season over

We just went through an election, and while I am as politically fascinated and informed as anyone you will meet, I hate election time more than most anything else.  Politics is a drug that sucks people in then causes them to exhibit the worst of themselves, myself unfortunately included. I prefer not to make a fool of myself, and I prefer not to have my opinions of others I respect damaged as well.

The one thing that I have been thinking of lately is the assertion that I often hear that it is a citizen's, and more so a Christian's, duty to vote.  I have also heard this couched in terms like thinking about who Jesus would have voted for.

Almost every conversation Jesus had was striking, but one that especially sticks out to me is his interaction with Pilate when the Jewish leadership was angling to get him crucified.  The charge they brought was that Jesus threatened the political structure that was in place.  He was to be the king of the Jews!  However, if Jesus' threat to Roman rule was even a remote possibility Pilate had every reason to want to punish, destroy, and make an example of Jesus.  After Pilate's personal interaction with Jesus, however, he took every opportunity available to a cowardly ruler such as himself to avoid sending Jesus to the cross.  Pilate had a reputation for brutality, but he was the one trying to save Jesus.

That speaks to me more than any other interaction Jesus had regarding what his political bent was.  More than Jesus paying the temple tax or explaining that we give to God and Caesar what they are owed, this points to how unimportant in the scheme of things politics was to him.  The one person who should have been the most concerned about a politically-motivated leader rallied to save him.  Based on what I have read from Scripture like this, not only do I not believe that it is our civic duty to vote, I do not believe that Christ would have voted either.

I will do a bit of an about face, though.  I am not Christ.  While getting involved with politics may have interfered with Jesus' ministry, that does not mean that I should not vote or be involved in politics.  There are worthy issues that Christians have addressed through the ballot box.  I say that with trepidation, however.  Political involvement and self-righteousness go hand-in-hand and both are addictive drugs that can very easily interfere with a Christian's purpose of being on this earth.  I have such a hard time avoiding both every election cycle.

hiring alex smith

I play fantasy football, and as a part of that I am aware of a specific player that in my opinion illustrates a major factor impacting the national employment situation today.

The San Francisco 49ers had the first pick in the 2005 NFL draft, and they used the opportunity to draft Alex Smith.  While I don't watch college football, I do know that he had a strong couple of years with the University of Utah and received some votes for the Heisman trophy.  The 49ers certainly felt he had something with him to pick him first overall.

In the next five or six years Smith would be considered something of a bust.  He almost always played just well enough to stay the starter, but no one would think that his play ever justified a place in the first round or two of the draft, let alone first overall selection.  In fantasy, people would chuckle if someone dared to draft him as anything more than a low-level backup for their imaginary team.  No one really took him seriously as anything other than a game manager for a team that relied on its defense for wins.

While most people figured the issue was with Smith, part of the problem was that Smith had five or six offensive coordinators and offensive systems in the same number of years.  This meant that he had to essentially relearn how to do everything every year, and readjust to a system that may or may not be a good fit for him.

Before the start of the season last year the team hired Jim Harbaugh as the head coach, who just happened to be a former quarterback.  I do not know what specifically happened in the coaching process, but the evidence indicates that Harbaugh was able to help develop Smith's potential like other coaches and coordinators were unable to in the past.  In that year Smith's play improved dramatically, and his performance showed more intelligent decision-making.  This is to the point where Smith started a streak of passes without an interception toward the end of the season that surpassed any similar streak any other quarterbacks on the team have ever had.  Those other quarterbacks include Joe Montana and Steve Young.  That streak has continued this season, and he has not thrown an interception yet.  The team is widely considered one of the likeliest to reach the Super Bowl this year.

I think this points well to something that doesn't get enough attention today.  Potential workers need to be developed, and businesses need to bite the bullet and accept that.

The narrative that has taken hold in the last few years in relation to the job market is that jobs are available and there are job shortages in places, but there is a serious mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skillsets of job seekers.  This, I have read, is the a major factor for the high unemployment rate.  As a fake example that mimics what I have read, a business that makes airplane parts might state that they'd be happy to hire welders, but they just cannot find any who are qualified to weld aluminum parts.  I don't completely agree with this assessment, though.

A few months ago I read an article, and I unfortunately cannot find it now, that disputed this narrative.  It stated that there is always a bit of a jobs/skills mismatch in the economy, and there is no real statistical evidence that the mismatch is larger now than at more prosperous times.  The notion is popular because both liberals and conservatives can use it to push their particular agendas.  Those who are more liberal can use this narrative to push for more education funding, and those who are more conservative can use this narrative to shift the responsibility for the jobs situation from business to the incompetence or laziness of the those who are out of work.  At the risk of beating up a couple of strawmen I would like to look at these scenarios.

The education argument has a little bit of merit, but most of it falls apart when you really think about what the narrative implies.  It essentially states that the education system itself fails to get people into a gainfully employable state.  If this is the case, the idea that simply pouring more money into that system will solve anything is naive.  A lot more could be said about this education argument, but that's not where I want to focus.

The other argument that the potential employee pool is simply inferior interests me more, though.  Businesses have always had to expect new hires to go through some learning curve.  Perfect candidates rarely exist, and when they do they typically command top dollar.  The expectation that, even in a weak jobs market, you can be picky enough to demand a laundry list of areas of expertise and experiences with different scenarios and technologies so that you don't have to develop the new hire, then offer a low-ball wage is ridiculous.

What a business is really saying when they say there aren't any qualified candidates is that they are not capable of developing the candidates that are available.  Either that, or they're simply unwilling.  That may be true, but it is also a red flag that those businesses might not acknowledge their role in creating and nurturing star workers, and might be shirking the responsibility to develop them at all.

This is a problem because in the new economy the jobs that require little training are also the ones that will be the easiest to automate, and these jobs will therefore cease to exist.  It's possible that the remaining important roles will go unfilled, or there will be a lot of people playing the role of an undeveloped 2005 Alex Smith who can sort of but not really do their job rather than being a 2012 Alex Smith who is a borderline rock star.

I think a lot of businesses have noticed that some employees get training then leave once they have been fully developed, and that is why those businesses are hesitant to hire someone who needs some development.  I have seen the same thing happen several times myself where someone worked just long enough to get past the learning curve only to leverage that new knowledge to find a role somewhere else.  I do believe, though, that if a business gains a reputation for one that is constantly developing its employees, and also gains a reputation of not downsizing half the company when hard times hit, that this will ultimately lead to retention and recruitment of long-term employees who will give the business a return on those resources spent in development.

In conclusion I believe that workers and businesses share the responsibility that the worker be up to the task of doing their job.  If there is a skills mismatch and a business cannot find people who have the requisite skillset, that is not the fault of the pool of workers that they do not have those qualifications.  It is a failure of expectations that developed people would be ready and waiting.  In that scenario, it is the business' responsibility to find people who can be properly developed to have the needed skillsets.  The companies that know how to identify diamonds in the rough and develop them will find that there are a lot of 2012 Alex Smiths available to be discovered.  Those companies will outperform the ones who decide not to bother with hiring their own Alex Smiths in the first place.

office people watching

This is about people watching from my office rather than other people in my office.

The office I had for a year-and-a-half overlooked a major road with a sidewalk that hosted a few pedestrians.  Most were normal and boring, but on occasion I'd see someone abnormal or entertaining.  A lot of what was entertaining was trying to figure out the back story for what was going on.  There is a residential area across the street, and some businesses along there too, but for various reasons it's not really a place where it makes sense to walk from one place to another.

While there were quite a few joggers, there was once a woman who, instead of jogging, did some sort of stretch-as-far-as-you-can-every-step walk for about a city block down the sidewalk.  Once, I saw a woman jogging with a man right behind her who was not subtle about the fact that he was checking her out the entire time.  Another time someone walked down the sidewalk in a full business suit pulling a small suitcase on wheels for the entire distance of the road that I could see from my office, which made little sense to me because he was on the residential side of the street rather than the office park.  One group of people that always piqued my interest was gaggle of four people (two men and two women) who I frequently saw walking one direction or the other in full business wear in mid-afternoon in no particular hurry.

My office has moved to a different side of the building as of the last month or two, so the people watching has had a different flavor.  I now overlook a parking lot facing the main entrance to the building, so I get some entertainment noticing the different expressions, gaits, and other nuances that people have going into the office versus leaving the office.  Most people have a more serious and determined (and often hurried) presence about them coming in compared to going out.

Probably the most entertaining thing I have seen so far happened on a morning a couple of weeks ago.  I noticed one specific middle-aged woman furiously spraying something on her clothes and in her vehicle before what I assume was her coming into work.  I wrote it off as her trying to get rid of cigarette smoke odor, and I was probably right.  However, as she got out of her vehicle she lit up a[nother] cigarette.  Why light up after spraying yourself with perfume or air freshener (or whatever it was) rather than before?  So perplexing!  I'll have to see if she does it again in the future.