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perspective

At work today I had this moment where I had to tell myself, “Shut up, Dave.”

It’s a somewhat cyclical thing with me.  Work begins taxing me more and more and I have these little Popeye moments where I say to myself, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!”  I start daydreaming about vacation, start thinking towards the weekend, developing a case “senioritis,” as they used to call it in those final months of high school.  If I let my thoughts linger there for too long, my productivity is impacted.  I get in some kind of work-depression funk where I start questioning the meaning of it all.  That, my friends, is when I have to give myself a figurative slap across the figurative cheek and tell myself to snap out of it.

My job is awesome; my life is awesome; my family is awesome; buck-up and be thankful.  I told someone today that the first problem on my brain when I wake up each morning is which car my wife is going to want me to drive to work, the big one or the little one.  Some guy in India wakes up in a hovel and the first thing he worries about is feeding his kids for the day.  Perspective.

Also at work today, and not related, I wondered to myself why my team can be so cynical all the time.  I thought about it and realized, I’m a cynical person.  Someone challenged me on this once, saying that if you studied the behaviors you most dislike in your team (as a manager), you’d find that most of them are modeled after the very same behavior exhibited by you.  Ouch.  A damning concept, but one that I think is probably true – at least in the case of my team’s cynicism.  I’m a pretty cynical and sarcastic person, or at least I like to entertain all reactions to things, a primary one being cynicism.  So, your team is cynical and you’re likely a cynic yourself.  How to fix it?  How to change the collective thread of behavior?  Model it.  You change, they change.  A tough, but thrilling, concept.  Sigh…

Yeah, time to get some perspective.  Goodnight.

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a few proud minutes

The other day Ben pointed out to me that I’m nearing a significant milestone.

See, I use this great open-source application called Subsonic to stream all my media.  For you non-techies, this means that I run a small program on a computer at my house which can “beam” my music and movies to wherever I happen to be.  If I’m on the road, I can use my cellphone; if I’m somewhere else, I can use any web browser.  The awesomeness of this software is not to be understated – it is, quite honestly, the media solution I’ve been dreaming of for a very long time.  In fact, it’s what finally moved me off the hard-disk based iPod model and into “the cloud.”  For you techies, I run Subsonic on a four-drive NAS, running Windows Home Server in a JBOD redundant configuration.  I keep this tiny machine in our master bedroom closet, where it has a dedicated line to the internet.  The machine provides me with a whopping 4.66 terabytes of storage for my pictures, music, movies and saved television shows (a separate  repository than our DVR).  Using folder mirroring I am fault-tolerant against any single-drive failure.  It’s a nice setup.

I use Subsonic daily; I drive to work while streaming music, I listen to music at work, etc.  One of the neater features of the application is that I can enable any number of friends or family to also have access to the server and likewise stream all my content at will to their mobile devices or PCs.  In this way, I’ve enabled a dozen or so music-minded folks who make regular use of the streaming server.  Oftentimes I’ll be logged in listening to music and see a friend or two also streaming this or that.  Subsonic even supports a rudimentary chat interface, so we can talk back and forth as we enjoy my growing library.

In fact, that “growing library” is what I stopped by to write about, for that’s exactly what Ben called my attention to.  I hadn’t even noticed, but he sent me an instant message in the Subsonic interface yesterday saying “You’re close to cracking the 1TB mark!”  I’m glad he did, because it seems like an important milestone to me.  Check out the screenshot below from the Subsonic interface, where the application summarizes the available listening library:

For a few minutes I was so happy that I almost reached a terabyte of music.  Then I realized that full-on 50% of this is movies (Subsonic doesn’t differentiate in its count).  The real music-only size hovers just over 500GB of disk space.  Nothing to be ashamed of, I suppose, yet still not quite as exciting as the ten minutes where I thought I was on the verge of library-size domination.

Guess I’ll just have to continue legally purchasing music from iTunes and Amazon in a reach for that next goal.

Goodnight.

 

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dad’s superman veneer

Shhh!  Don’t tell anyone, but I made a conscious effort to dial-down my work investment this week.  I really did.  I was sort of sick a couple days so that forced slowdown helped, but I also tried to do less.  You can see, from the writing, that it worked.  I feel better (not bad at all) about it.  Let’s go.

I don’t know if it’s the lovely Spring weather or what, but lately Keaton’s had a renewed interest in riding her bike.  I talk more about the whole training wheels saga later; right now we’ve just been getting out of doors almost nightly and riding small suburban circuits.  While we ride together, I can help but to do a bit of dad showing-off… dredging up muscle memories made in my youth and popping and riding wheelies (on my mountain bike, no less), riding with no hands, “fishtailing,” “endo’ing,” and bunny hopping.  (I think) she finds it all terribly impressive, and a dad’s gotta keep up his Superman veneer, you see.

Monday evening Sharaun was at the gym and Keaton, Cohen, and I had all gone on a long walk around the neighborhood.  Keaton chose to ride her bike and after we got back home she joined up with a group of neighbor girls who were also out riding bikes in the cul-de-sac across from our house.  For a while, while the sun was still well enough above the horizon, I stretched out on the grass in the front yard and played with Cohen there while she rode.  Then, as dusk came and the sun was no longer there to warm us, Cohen and I took our leave of the lawn and headed inside.  I hollered at Keaton that she could stay out and ride with the girls.  She stayed out there and cycled around in circles until after the streetlights came on and all her friends had to go home too.  It was after eight o’clock before I stepped outside to call her back.

Later, I learned that she was absolutely thrilled to be given this tiny freedom.  I considered it quickly at the time, only just briefly, for it really isn’t a situation she often finds herself in.  She’s only just five, and the times where she’s “alone” are usually playdates with friends or in childcare at the gym or church.  She hasn’t really yet experienced the empowering rush that I can remember as a kid when you felt that the world (as big as it was to you at the time in your radius of four of five suburban blocks) was yours to explore and discover.  But for Keaton that night she was out hanging with the big girls.  Riding bikes with no parents, laughing and playing and having a grand old five year old time.  Nevermind that I could hear her the whole time through the front screen door, or that I could see her by craning my neck from my seat on the couch – to her she was unchaperoned.

As she was coming in she said to me, “You can do that again Dad; let me ride by myself.  I wasn’t scared or sad at all; it was fun.”  It’s fascinating to try and plumb the psychological implications of what your kids say and do.  Maybe this little self-affirming comment was her way of admitting that, in fact, she may have been a little scared or sad to begin with – but that those notions soon passed and she was thrilled to realize that there is a world off the apron strings.  I figure one thing I can do is try and give her an idea of just how big and wonderful that world is, maybe grow in her some passion to explore it and test it.  Then again, I have no idea what I’m doing here.

OK, the other thing I wanted to capture about that evening bike ride.  I mentioned I could hear the girls in the circle through the front door, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to stand there and eavesdrop a bit.  I’m glad I did, because I got to overhear my daughter bragging to her friends.  “Hey do you guys know that my dad can lift the whole front wheel of his bike and ride around?  He can also ride with no hands and jump his whole bike off the ground!”  Hearing this made my heart swell, I tell you.  Of course the other girls were quick to represent their dads in response, I heard lots of “My dad does X,” and “Yeah and mine can do Y!”  If you’re not a dad of a little girl, I don’t think you can even approximate what emotions this evokes in a man.  It’s primal, tickling something in us which dates back to primitive times; and it is so satisfying it’s hard to describe.  (Pat just wait.)

Just wait until she’s fourteen or fifteen and reality comes crashing in as she realizes I’m not but a human after all, and a flawed one like the rest of us at that.  Owell, until then I’ll enjoy the view from this pedestal.

Goodnight.

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carseats in RVs (or, death-baiting)

As I’ve mentioned many times here on sounds familiar, our family is going on massive, cross-country RV odyssey this summer.

As this hopefully amazing trip nears, I’ve been putting the final touches on all manner of planning.  One thing which I wanted to make sure I got right was the question of what we do with little Cohen on the long journey.  He’ll be about eleven months old, and therefore will need to travel in a carseat.  Not knowing where best to install a carseat in an RV, I hit-up Google for some advice.  I was at first a bit dismayed that there didn’t seem to be all that much information out there.

Then I remembered that most sane people wouldn’t choose to drive a baby eight-thousand miles around the USA in an RV and so realized that this lack of information kind of made sense.  I would have to break out my Google kung-fu and find the deep links, search some RV-centric forums, maybe even some carseat-centric ones (yes, there are plenty of both – if it exists, the internet has a forum, or fetish, or both, for it).  After my initial dismay, however, my reaction changed a bit when I actually found some discussion…

Did you know there are carseat nazis?  Well, there are.

Look, before we get started here – I’m not attempting, in any way, to minimize the need for, or obvious safety benefits of, carseats for children and infants.  That would be stupid.  Carseats are great and I’m all for laws compelling their usage.  I am no scofflaw or negligent parent, and neither is my wife – who cut our daughter’s grapes into quarters until she was well past two years old.  I’ll also try to not be too derisive here towards those folks who have made carseat science their religion of choice.

Anyway, there are carseat nazis.

My search above eventually led me to what looked like a series of relevant threads on a carseat forum.  Unfortunately, germane as those threads may be, they were all nearly universally saying there is simply no safe way to transport a baby (or child, by extension) in an RV.  Most of the respondents, in fact, were quite quick to demonize anyone who asked about it or suggested doing so.  Take for example some of the following responses to variations of the question, “What do I do about carseats in RVs?” (all typos left intact, for extra derision):

No way Jose!! That’s asking for a multiple funeral. Car seats cannot be installed on side-facing vehicle seats – RV seats are not crash tested at all.

I would never use the dinette seats. Ever. Safe use requires a chassis-bolted seat belt in a forward-facing seat and most RV seats are only afixed to plywood in the flooring.

There are just so many risks with RVs (top heavy leads to easy roll over, countless projectiles including other passengers, etc.) that my child will never ride in one.  An unrestrained 100lbs person (or someone whose belt is not boldet to the core frame) becomes about 3000lbs of force upon your child in a 30 MPH crash.

RV’s are underpowered and are a nuisciance pest to our highways, due to there slow speeds, difficulty to pass, and lack of driver training required to opperate.

We’d love to RV some day, but we’d never consider putting the kids in a motorized RV – eek, the risks.

Loose or larger items typically transported in RVs during a trip can become deadly projectiles in a crash. For example, during a crash at 30 mph, a case of canned goods or bottled water weighing 20 lbs flying off the counter or out of the kitchenette’s cupboard would be the equivalent of 600 lbs slamming into an RV occupant.  An improperly restrained passenger who weighs 150 lbs would become the equivalent of 4,500 lbs during a crash at 30 mph.

A tow-behind camper and vehicle with which to tow it is the only safe option. That way everyone stay safely restrained, but you still can camp.

The injuries sustained by kids from wearing lap only belts are horrible- lacerations to organs in the lower abdomen, septic shock from torn intestines, lower spinal fractures and worse. So much so that emergency room surgeons have given the symptoms a name, “Seatbelt Syndrome.” If you can find any other option, including a custom tether anchor, your child would be much safer.

I don’t even know where to start (although I am intrigued about being able to become 3,000lbs of “force,” that sounds kind of awesome).  I think it’s fair (and derisive I suppose, sorry again) to say that carseat-heads probably missed the day Newtonian physics was taught in school… or maybe only half-listened.  Their hearts are in the right place, I can say that much.  I can get this kind of attitude, I think.  We all love our kids and would rather they stay alive than cease living – that’s an easy one.  But something about the above smacks me as self-righteous, loving-to-the-point-of-crippling, overbearing and over-protective.

So I tell you what internet.  Here’s what we’re going to do:  We are going to take Cohen (eleven months) and Keaton (five years) on this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime journey.  We’re going to put the carseats in the dinette location with the latch and bank on #1 – not crashing & #2 – being the winning/bigger object if and when we do.  I’m not going to care if the belts are attached to the frame or the wood or whatever.  I’m also not going to even consider the fact that items in an RV during a crash can become “missiles.”  In fact, I contend that this point is beyond ridiculous.  Anything, in any wreck, can become a deadly projectile.  I can also tell you right now I will probably let my five year old do “reasonable” walking around in the living quarters whilst we drive (no scissors allowed).  You know what that means, I am obviously rooting for the worst.

A car crash is bad; a car crash is never good; the most basic idiot knows this.  I hereby proclaim that unless you never, ever take your child in a vehicle at all, ever, period – you are just death-baiting.  You really gonna sit there and gamble with your kid’s life like that?   You monster, you abject beast.  I only drive if we have to go to the emergency room (when my kid’s peanut allergy acts up) and when I do I keep the child in an inflatable bubble and never go faster than 25mph, beat that.

Pish-tosh internet, pish-tosh.

Goodnight.

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i’m sorry but i killed your hops

Hey Pat I’m sorry, but I killed your hops.

I know you entrusted them to me while you’re overseas for a couple years, and I’ll admit the task really wasn’t that hard.  Two big buckets of dirt that need water and sunshine so the hops growing in them don’t die.  Well I gave them a prominent spot on the sunny-side of my backyard, you know the side I plant the garden on?  Yeah, and they are also within reach of the sprinkler’s throw so I know they got enough hydration.  I even weeded them regularly to ensure they weren’t being choked out.

Heck, for the entire first year you were gone the actually grew like gangbusters (whatever that analogy is supposed to mean, I have some doubts about “gangbusters'” potential for growth myself (look close, there’s a plural possessive mixed into those quotes, it makes sense but it’s hard to see)).  They climbed out of their buckets and found the twine I’d strung upward to the fencepost and trained around it.  They wound up all green and leafy (but never actually flowered, so their viability for brewing was questionable even before the matter was finally settled upon their brown and desiccated death).  They made it to the top of the fence and struck out for freedom; ran out to the sideyard and entangled with the decorative shrubs out there, all harmonious-like.  I kept checking them for flowers, thinking maybe I could “harvest” a couple for you and freeze them or something… as a lark.

Sometime after that first year one of the pots was colonized by ants.  I knew it had happened, but not only was there not much I could do about it but I actually figured it might be beneficial for the root system. I’m not saying this ant manifest destiny is what did that one pot in, but I guess they could’ve been feasting on the roots and I’d have been none the wiser.  The anted pot did seem to turn first, though.  It never grew as vigorously, was less leafy and overall healthy-looking than its partner.  Were I one of those vegan connected-to-the-earth types I might think that the vibrant one missed his runty friend and simply wasted away in despair after its loss.

And now it’s just one big sad funeral scene out there.  We had some bad wind last week when a storm blew through and it toppled the pot of what used to be the stronger of the two.  It’s now laying on its side halfway down the slope, threatening to spill its contents, which probably didn’t happen only because the roots of the weeds growing within held the stuff together.  Later today I’m planning to go out there and right the poor thing, say some benediction and get on with the grieving period so I don’t feel too bad reclaiming the soil for other purposes.  Like the Bible says – dust to dust.

I’m shrugging.  It happens.  I owe you some hops.

Goodnight.

 

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the only constant is

Back from the rainy, windy, cold Oregon coast.

We had these richly-appointed rooms at a brilliant little seaside resort.  There were fireplaces and deckchairs on porches and tiny little nautical touches.  Very bed and breakfast feeling.  Too bad, then, that most of the weekend felt like being aboard a trawler hunkering out a winter squall.  The rain was sideways and the wind howled outside the conference room.  I got only one small chance to get out and walk on the beach, during some God-aligned moment where a thirty-minute break aligned with a slackened downpour.  I had my black dress shoes on with jeans (I really need new shoes) and my coat buttoned tight against the wind.  A cold gray beach can provide for a really decent moment of solitude and contemplation.  I imagined that near-end scene from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

The “work” bits of the days were good, but I realized something; hear me out.  I propose that the fundamentals of “how to be a great manager” were more or less identified, let’s say 90% pegged, sometime in the 1950s.  You know sometime after Harvard Business School really hit its stride and research there and elsewhere coalesced.  Sometime back then in the 1950s we collectively managed to categorize what makes a good people-manager, along with how best to train and grow those skillsets.  Since then, many people have made much money re-packaging, re-wording, and re-branding that initial revelatory philosophy.  They’ll assign new mnemonics, write tenets onto diferent geometric shapes or use new analogies for processes –  but it’s the all pretty much same thing once you boil it down.  Maybe some temporally-aware nuance gets added along the way to account for things like the internet, but the underlying physics of the management universe remain.

Don’t get me wrong; I love it.  I really do.  I eat up the practice of trying to draw conclusions from trends and data; man I get a kick out of looking across some disparate set of happenings and stuffs and having that light bulb flick on where you go, “Oh!  There’s a pattern here; there’s some truth.”  And that’s what these conferences always are: a bunch of managers taking a few moments to feel self-important (it’s a good thing, a little self-acknowledgement with moderation) and talking about things like goals and actualization and Lord knows what.  Maybe you think it’s silly but I find it affirming.

Got to see good friends too; spend some time enjoying good company.  And now I’m back home and back to a busy couple days of the remaining week.

Goodnight.

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but it’ll do

Tomorrow morning early it’s off to Oregon.  It’s not a cross-country trip with my family.  No, not yet; but it’ll do.

We’ll be posted up on the beach, a gaggle of managers (I don’t know what the right term is for a group of us).  I catch the plane at 5:30am.  On the drive over to the Oregon coast I hope to stop at this former logging camp place that’s now a killer breakfast spot.  Have some eggs and bacon and coffee and enjoy the smaller parts of conversation.

Once we get to the hotel I can maybe put a little piece of the past week behind me.  Take the three days to conference and network and wine-taste and come back to things which have progressed a bit.  I’m brining some cigars and I like to think we might be close enough to the beach that I might walk along the strand in the Oregon mist and smoke one.  One day at a time anyway, right?

I expect another slow week for writing, but I’ll try.

Goodnight.