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.