Educational Standards

Boy, doesn't that sound imposing?

I bugged my daughter to talk to the three teachers in whose classes she wasn't doing well (and I realize that I'm overreacting a little bit, but I think its only a little); after a day, I also wrote each this letter (essentially the same one to each):

We were surprised to see our daughter's most recent grading period results from your class. We've told her that she needs to put forth greater effort, and that she needs to talk with you to determine if there is anything additional she ought to be doing, either generally (things she isn't doing, or doing poorly) or specifically as added-credit opportunities. If you have any suggestions or recommendations, we would welcome them.

And these are the responses -

From the class where she got a C -

Thank you for contacting me regarding her grade in English. We have had a few grades since the interim reports were printed, and she currently has an 82%. She has been performing decently this marking period – her grade was dropped a bit with her English/History persuasive essay. For some reason, I didn’t get her essay until more than a week after it was due. I have no doubt that she had it done on time, but she told me she forgot to turn it in. I had numerous students with this same issue and I was clear that if I didn’t have it on time, for whatever reason, points would be deducted.

As for the remainder of this quarter, she will have the opportunity to bring her grade up and I feel that she is very capable of doing so. We will have one vocabulary quiz and two tests for our drama unit (we’re reading "Brian’s Song"), as well as at least one more journal entry (due this Friday). As long as she continues to do her work and performs well on the tests and quiz, she should have no trouble bringing her grade up.

From one of the two B's –

She currently has a 90%. We have several assessments remaining that could raise her grade to an A. If she does her part in a Renaissance project that we are beginning today and finishes strong on her Explorers Timeline she should be able to climb into the A range.

And from the other --

Thank you for contacting me. She did struggle on the unit test, but has done really well on her other assignments. I did offer the opportunity to make corrections to the unit test and I will be updating students on their grades later this week. She has another large test on May 31st. I’ve talked with students on how to organize and prepare to study for these large unit exams. I’d be more than happy to work with her if she needs assistance- encourage her to come to see me during Period 9 on Days 1, 3 & 4. In addition, she has a daily journal in which I ask them ‘sample’ test questions, she could ask you to quiz her a few times a week to see if she really is prepared.

So, our feeling is that she has a pretty good shot at raising the two Bs to A's, and the C to a B, though possibly not an A. I was pleased by all of the responses, and particularly by the last one, which sounded to me as if the instructor is almost bending over backwards to give her the opportunity to get back up into the range where she normally performs.

Why the focus on the grades? Well, both her mother and I think that its pretty important for her to do well in school. We think that its important for her to have what I'll call a 'habit of success' -- to know that she can do well, and that doing so makes life better for her -- that later classes are easier because she worked hard now, and that post-school successes and opportunities are more likely to occur if she does well now.

We say, and we mean, that if she does poorly, but has tried hard, we will not be seriously disappointed. We will be unhappy, but her effort counts for a lot with us. In these cases -- in particular the C -- we felt that the grade drop was (probably) a de facto proof that she was not trying as hard as she could; hence, our response.

At the same time, we know that its easy for us to say 'well, you're not trying hard enough'. I know from my own miserable performance in school that that sort of comment doesn't really help. Sometimes the kid is slacking off, but sometimes, like an engine running without being in gear, they are trying -- but the effort is not focused, because they don't know where or how to do it. (Should they? Sure. Do they? Not always.) So we see it as our task to give her a lot of support and encouragement, and when she does well, to praise her. When she has problems, we want to know, and we want to help her get back on track.

I hope we're not asking too much of her, but I don't think we are. I would be interested to know if anyone thinks differently.

Oddness

I had an odd experience this morning.

I was informed of another job in this company that I might want to apply for, and I did -- but for the first time, I found myself thinking 'You know what? I don't care if I get this or not. These people are not worth it.'

Which isn't really true. Its mostly because I'm watching a local goat rodeo as they panic over responding to some auditors, reminding me of what I really don't like about this place. So I'm thinking "You want me gone? Fine, I'm gone."

Course, having a strong possibility of a job offer as a backup does help with the independent turn of mind. They called this afternoon and said they really wanted to get moving on this -- so would I be willing to accept a four day all expenses paid trip to St. Louis to attend their annual conference?

Would I?

Weary Wednesday

Actually, its not that bad. I did the bike again -- I kidded my wife that its just that old thing, but the truth is that I'm still pleased with myself for doing it. And still getting results -- I appear to have lost about five pounds, which is goodness. Not being able to eat all that well helps, too!

This morning we have that meeting. Should be fun. I will not withhold any information, nor will I fail to mention something that they may forget to ask, if its important -- but I'm not going to strain every muscle to remember every stray bit of information, for two reasons: first, its been my experience that in meetings like this, people only remember the major stuff anyway, and second, these guys feel its a badge of honor for them to Figure It Out Themselves. I do feel a little bit of regret, though, but I am getting used to the idea that I have two weeks left from today. And given the information I got yesterday, about the possible future plans, this is likely a good time to go. In fact, if I knew of someone in my position -- leaving, with three months pay with which to loll away the summer if I wished, plus a solid interview for a new job, and the chance to simply stay home, if thats what I want -- I'd be pretty envious. I won't mention the negatives, or the upcoming surgeries -- why ruin their fantasy?

DeGrumper

I am in a slightly grumpy mood, because I am handing over stuff that I do for the Great Job Termination, which is the Professional Way To Handle These Things, even though what I want to do is say Hey, Figure It Out Yourself, You Boobs, Since You Obviously Think You Can Do Without Me!

So I am going to point to this picture, which I've seen multiple times, and which always makes me smile.

Movers and Shakers....

Or perhaps it should be 'Moved and Shaken'. I got an email from a friend today to the effect that my company is contemplating making substantial cuts in the managerial ranks, not to mention, shaking up the structure of the company to, presumably, need fewer manager drones. I have no idea if its true, but its certainly plausible. I like to say that the corporate culture there is 'we want innovators, but get your manager's approval first'.

The thing is, very few people actually have innovative thoughts, let alone ones that will pan out. I suspect it can be trained in, but I don't know that from experience -- its just a guess. And now that I've seen what I consider to be a significant flaw in my new Toyota (which I still like a lot; this hasn't changed that), I find myself being a little skeptical of how well the culture of innovation is actually working over there.

I am typing with my eyes drifting closed. I did not sleep well last night. I've never had to take the powerful drugs more than once before after a major dental procedure, and last night I did it twice, full dose, plus some ibuprofen. Glah.

Natural Highs

This is from the Office Spam humour web site.

Natural Highs

1. Falling in love.
2. Laughing so hard your face hurts.
3. A hot shower.
4. No lines at the supermarket.
5. A special glance.
6. Getting mail.
7. Taking a drive on a pretty road.
8. Hearing your favorite song on the radio.
9. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.
10. Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.
11. Chocolate milkshake (vanilla or strawberry).
12. A bubble bath.
13. Giggling.
14. A good conversation.
15. The beach.
16. Finding a 20 dollar bill in your coat from last winter.
17. Laughing at yourself.
18. Looking into their eyes and knowing they love you
19. Midnight phone calls that last for hours.
20. Running through sprinklers.
21. Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.
22. Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.
23. Laughing at an inside joke with FRIENDS
25. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
26. Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep.
27. Your first kiss (either the very first or with a new partner).
28. Making new friends or spending time with old ones.
29. Playing with a new puppy.
30. Having someone play with your hair.
31. Sweet dreams.
32. Hot chocolate.
33. Road trips with friends.
34. Swinging on swings.
35. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.
36. Making chocolate chip cookies.
37. Having your friends send you homemade cookies.
38. Holding hands with someone you care about.
39. Running into an old friend and realizing that some things (good or bad) never change.
40. Watching the _expression on someone's face as they open a much desired present from you.
41. Watching the sunrise.
42. Getting out of bed every morning and being grateful for another beautiful day.
43. Knowing that somebody misses you.
44. Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply.
45 Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people think.

Later That Day...

Things are slowly getting better. I still have aches. I won't go into gory details, but I will say that they are better than three hours ago. To those wonderful people who gave me their best wishes and prayers, thank you. I am confident that they helped.

Next step: meeting with the plastic surgeon who will do the bone graft -- but that initial visit isn't for three weeks, which is, of course, an eternity.

Tonight my daughter is in a school concert. I won't be going -- I do like it, but I don't like it three hours worth, and this provides a valid reason for staying home. She'll know its certainly not so that I can eat -- my meals today have been a liquid nutrition shake and a popsicle -- which latter turned out not to be a great idea, as you normally bite a popsicle, but I can't really bite too easily at the moment. Fortunately for me, I have a relatively high threshhold of pain, and so I hope to be able to eat soft foods for breakfast tomorrow.

I continue to look for employment within my company, and as for results -- well, lets just say that I'm consistant!

Things I've Discovered

Anesthesiologists aren't comfortable with people who are joking about the process of being drugged, or who know what an SSRI is.

Dentists don't appreciate being reminded to wash their hands.

And now I think I'll try to get some sleep before the drugs wear off.

Rolling

I don't make very many changes to the blog listing I have on the left. They are all sites that I found over time, whose writing style I find to be congenial. I was delighted to discover (this is not a hint) that a couple of them had my site listed on their page. Gee, I thought, you really like me! Well, okay, it sounded better when Sally Fields said it. But still... So I was surprised at my reaction when I noticed that one of the sites no longer had my name. I don't think it was just me; the site was redesigned, and the blog roll was much fewer people.

Still surprised me, though. Wassamatter, you don't like me any more?

Thinking

What I'm trying not to do at the moment is think about eating. Persuant to the surgery today, I haven't eatten since about 10 last night. Consequently, I'm getting a little hungry...and I still have over an hour to go. I'm sure that once I'm actually there, I won't feel hungry in the slightest... now I just feel like I want it done and gone. I realized a while ago that the reason that I feel apprehensive is not because I'm nervous about this particular procedure; I accept that the likelihood of success of this step is very good. What scares me is that this commits me to the follow-on steps, and those, the likelihood of success isn't as great. I think they're pretty good, but there is the possibility that they won't work, and then I'm stuck. I hate being stuck.

I also realized the other day that I'm angry about getting kicked out of this company. I wouldn't do anything to stay, but I'd do a lot -- but they didn't ask. They just jerked their corporate thumb and said 'Out you go'. Is that any way to treat people? I was reading a book recently where the author said that she briefly had a job where a coworker told her that if she had to miss work due to a medical event, she should just 'bring a doctors note' when she came back. Her thought was that if that was the level of trust in the company, perhaps she ought not to be there. This company does that if you're out more than three days. I've never been at that point, but I promised myself that if I ever was, I'd skip the note. Sue me. Of course, thats a moot point now.

I put a magnet on the refrigerator that I got at the New York Public Library. It's a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt saying that you should do something every day that frightens you. I think doing it once a month might be past me.

Bragging

I don't often brag -- at least, not intentionally -- so forgive me for it, just this once.

This is a chart of readings I've taken over the last two months. The red lines are where I'd like the associated reading to be, or below.

Not bad. And its all due to using the exercise bike every damn day.

FreakOut In Progress

I have started the pre-dental-work freakout.

Just about exactly one year ago, I bit down on a piece of crisp bacon on Memorial Day, and felt my partial dental bridge snap. It being a holiday weekend, no one was around to fix it -- not that it could fixed, since it had actually snapped in half. This is when I discovered that those things have a life expectancy. I thought they lasted forever.

By the time I saw the dentist, the still-attached part had pulled off, snapping half a tooth in the process. This was, somehow, my fault. The dental surgeon removed the two anchor teeth, and I got a temporary upper central plate. The plan was to start the implant process that August.

August was when I broke my arm.

Tomorrow at about 10:30, they do the extraction. And then there's no turning back. Bone graft. Hope to hell it takes. Then implants (if it did) or god-knows-what if it doesn't. I tell myself that it will all probably work. It probably will. I'd feel better if every time I talk to the surgeon, he doesn't spend about a third of the time looking very thoughtful as he gazes at Xrays. I know he's conservative, and I like that. But I could use a little unalloyed optimism right about now.

I do truly love being backed into a corner, particularly when the condition is partially my fault.

Arghh.....

Earmarked

One of the reasons that I think of myself as a liberal Republican, rather than a conservative Democrat (which I think of as two sides of the same coin) is because I favor fiscal solvency. Thats a religion that Democrats hadn't adhered to, much, though in the last two years, they've discovered that as a drawing point. (I'd like to think they discovered it because it was right, not because it was politically expedient.) A distinguishing mark of the fiscal proficacy that brought on the Democratic victory in the last election is the dramatically expanded use of 'earmarks', where money is specifically allocated to projects favored by a politician. The concept's probably not automatically bad, though I've never heard of an earmark that is aimed at, say, getting decent shoes on kids in the winter, and I've heard of lots aimed at, say, building bridges to nowhere and putting politicians names in prominent places.

I'm a Catholic, by the way. That's relevant to this.

So I was not surprised to read, in today's New York Times, that a politician had earmarked funds to go a specific function in Pennsylvania. But I was surprised, and more than a little irritated, to find that the specific function was rebuilding a state road that fed the campus of a Catholic college. As a result of an earmark by a senior Democratic representative, the college got four million dollars of federal money to fix up the road.

I don't like it. Money was steered to a specific recipient because that recipient had political pull -- not because it was justifiable (though it was), not because it was the best use of the money (and it probably wasn't), but because of who they knew -- in this case, they hired a professional lobbyist, who got them the money.

I wish I was on the mailing list of that college, just so I could refuse to give them money. Because what they did was wrong -- not illegal, not even terribly unethical, but wrong.

Prius

I discovered something amazing, and more than that, distressing about the Prius this morning.

The car has a nifty feature in that you can leave your key (actually, just a fob) in your pocket. As long at you're very near the car (within about three inches, which of course includes being inside it), the car will start. There's a slot on the dash where you can put the fob, and if you do, it locks in place while the car is on, but you don't have to.

This morning we took that car to church. When I got out, it wouldn't lock. Usually, that means a door is open; sometimes, it means the lights are on. (The car has but one chime for any problem.Bad design, Toyota. ) Hell with this, I said, after trying two or three things, I'll leave it open.

When we came out, I got in, and looked down. Why is the dashboard lit up? I thought. It only does that when the car is....

OMG. I had gotten out and walked away, and the car was still on. Not using the gas engine, so it was completely silent, but -- on.

Would a passerby have been able to drive it away?

We just did a test. I sat in the passenger seat with the fob in my pocket; my wife, in the drivers seat. She started it. I got out and walked about fifteen feet away. The car beeped three times as I walked away with the fob. She then put it in reverse, drove down the driveway, and back in again.

Yup. A passerby could have stolen the car. Effectively, the 'keys were still in the ignition, and the engine was running' -- even though they weren't, and it wasn't.

Very bad design, Toyota.

But the play was good. And so was the hot dog.

Yesterday's trip was... well, a trip.

We had gotten an email saying to be at a local shopping plaza at 7:30 to meet the bus. Ever paranoid, we were there at 7:15, and saw a couple of other cars obviously waiting. Okay, good. We saw a Trailways bus motor by, but it was going the wrong way, and it was too early. But by 7:25...no bus. We queried one of the other cars and found that they were not waiting for a Girl Scout troop. We decided to drive around to the likely staging areas... nothing. By ten to eight, we thought well, hell. We went home, telling the daughteroid that it appeared that she would be able to attend her friend's birthday party after all.

My wife called the woman who was organizing it. She's gone, the husband said. Predictable conversation ensues. Two minutes later, the phone rings. They're at the school... and they're waiting for you. WHAT??? We grab the kiddo and leap into the car. Yep, theres the bus... and it isn't fully loaded yet. Turns out that the bus's handicapped lift didn't work, and as the trip was organized by a woman who's daughter is in a wheelchair, that was kind of key. They sent out another bus, and it had arrived about five minutes before we got there. So about half an hour late, we leave.

Along the way we pull into a roadside stop so that the driver can take a smoke break. He then has to take five minutes to fiddle with the rubber weatherstripping on the door so it will seal right.

The driver makes it to the Lincoln Tunnel okay. In the tunnel, he shouts 'What building?' What? Turns out he means 'Where are we going?' You got all this way and NOW you ask? But okay, we tell him, he finds the spot. The kiddo is still sulking because she wanted to go to the party. We walk down Fifth Avenue, get something to eat, and by forty-second she's in a relatively good mood. I ask if she'd like to see the interior of the main branch of the library, and she says not really. We walk up to the plaza in front of the main branch, and she asks if we can go inside. Why, sure! And it turns out she really likes it in there. Okay.

So we walk around some more, I get a hot dog (I do dearly love New York hot dogs), and we get to the theater on time. Nose bleed seats, but the play isn't bad, and she likes it. Now we're supposed to go as a group to the restaurant which is really close, here's a map from Mapquest.

Numero uno: There are thirteen million bazillion people milling around outside the theater . The group, such as it is, is almost immediately dissolved.

Numero dos: Mapquest maps are tickety-boo BUT THEY ASSUME YOU'RE DRIVING!!! So the go this way, that way, round the block is meaningless. Plus, the picture has the theater marked, and the restaurant...not. But its okay, we know the building number, how hard can this be. Answer: when you start out by walking the wrong direction, twice...and decide to go around the blcck to avoid the crowds...and the blocks are way freakin' long.... and every damn girl and/or girl scout mother (aka 'responsible adults') think it would be just peachy to stop at every street vendor selling purses.... pretty damn hard. So I say look, I'm going ahead, I'll find the the restaurant.

Numero tres: I find the building, no problem. Well, if you don't count that I don't actually see the restaurant, and I wonder if its inside the building (is it Sixteen Thirty Three? Or did she said Fifteen Thirty Three?) and, oh good, I don't have my phone. But I ask the helpful Times Square Alliance guide (who seems to think that this is very funny), and he points to the depressed plaza so that you can't actually see the restaurant from the street.

But we finally have dinner, and now its time for the bus, and, it actually comes. Oh, look, here come the girls. Oh, look, street vendors!!! At this point, I turn to my wife and say 'There are only three people who I care if they make it onto that bus.' But we finally do get on the bus, and the bus driver discovers the joy, the absolute freaking joy, that is Saturday evening traffic in the theater district. I think he's going to go apoplectic. But we get through the tunnel and onto the highway and we're moving and the rubber weatherstripping on the door pulls off and starts to make a whistling sound. So he stops to fix it.

On the bridge. On the side. Right next to the edge. We can look right the hell down into the water.

But he gets it fixed to his liking and we're moving again and this is good right until he stops. To wash the windshield. But after about ten minutes we're moving again and this is good until he stops for a smoke break. And then has to fix the door again. But then we get going and finally we're on the damn highway and wait a minute, why are we going over a bridge, we didn't go over a bridge coming in.

Oh. He missed the turn for the highway we want, so he's taking the turnpike. Hey, its only half an hour longer.

Not counting the smoke break at the rest plaza.. Hell with this, I think, I'm getting off and getting something to drink. Um, no I'm not, he appears to have locked the door. Oh, I can open that, my daughter says, reaching for the dashboard, I saw him do it.

Don't touch that!!!!!

He comes back, the door actually seals on the first try, and we're on the way, and it starts to rain. He seems to be driving awfully fast, but at this point, we really don't care. We finally get back to the school around an hour late.

But the play was good. And so was the hot dog.

Week - End Blend

Its been an interesting couple of days, as Arthur Dent might say.

Last night we discovered that our daughter hasn't been doing well in two classes, based on the most recent period marking report. She actually got a C in one class, and B in two others. I was stunned, and shortly thereafter, so was she. She protested that when she got a C in midterms for one class last year, I didn't go ballistic. I think I probably did. Whatever, I told her that that was a midterm, and she had half a year to make it up. This is very close to the end, and she has one period. She not only has to do well, she has to make extra effort.

Guess what this does to my thoughts about working away from home?

My wife and I spent some time talking about this possible job. She mentioned in passing that she always sleeps better when I am here, and that she is feeling just a little stressed at the idea of me being away half the time. Not overwhelmingly so, but just a little.

Guess what this does to my thoughts about working away from home?

Today we go to New York to attend a stage production. One of the classics: Tarzan. Eight hours on a bus. Oh, boy. Still, maybe I'll be able to get an egg cream.

Concepts

I was just reading the second of two articles about the problems that my company is having.

What amazes me particularly is that now that I've read them, I feel that I have a better sense of whats going on in that company than I have gotten from anything generated within it. The fellow who wrote them is someone I've always regarded as a sensationalist, looking for the cheap shots and the tawdry. That may be true -- but he came out with a clear, coherent article that details problems in a major corporation, and actions that they're taking to address them. Nothing of the sort has been visible within the company, and, where he quotes a response from the company to his first article, its simply bland niceties and legalisms. For example --

"We said when we released 1Q results we would be putting in place a series of actions to address cost issues in our U.S. strategic outsourcing business. We have undertaken efforts toward that, and recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S. While any such reduction is difficult for those employees affected, these actions are well within the scope of our ongoing workforce rebalancing efforts."

If your 'ongoing efforts' are designed to include firing people, then of course the actions are within the scope. That doesn't explain why its necessary,other than the casual mention of 'cost issues'. By contrast, the fellow's article says that the company is losing money, and that they are drastically trimming the place where they're losing the most. Thats painful, but it's believable.

Why can't companies say that?

Coo-coo-kachoo

There must be things about Canada that aren't cool. But it does seem that whenever I learn something new about Canada, it's interesting stuff.

Today I learned about The Walrus.

Taking the Picture

I'm not a big fan of Mother's Day, and I don't have sons.

Other than that, I can really identify with this.

Proof

If anyone needed proof that I am not a deep thinker, this occurred to me this morning:

Its easy for us to look at people who are richer, thinner, more accomplished, more - anything - than us, and envy them.

Its difficult for us to look at people who are poorer, fatter, less able, less - anything - than us, and feel grateful.

Richardson, Huh?

I never even heard of this guy before....but he makes an interesting case.

School Thoughts

I am home at the moment -- I came home at noon so that I could bring my mother to an arthritis treatment program in the afternoon. The program is a combination exercise and new-age program; it shows stretches and limberness exercises, and it ends with the classic new-age concepts: soft music, and instructions to breathe in...feel the air move in your lungs...feel the warmth of your heart. The program is held in what up to two years ago was a bustling one story school with about ten classrooms, a small auditorium, and a library. Now the entire building, or portions thereof, are available for event rental. Because the music was still going on when I got there, I wandered the halls a bit, looking into the barren classrooms, still with their Kindergarten and such signs, thinking about what it must have been like when the kids thronged through it. When you're a kid, those places always seem so big and mysterious; when you're older, you find yourself wondering why it was so awe-inspiring. I liked walking around in there, but it was also a little unsettling. Buildings like that are supposed to be populated.

It put me in mind of a phrase I heard some time ago, which I may have mentioned on occasion, to the effect that people yearn for eternal life who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm facing the likelihood that in three weeks, my job at this company will be over. I've already psychologicially withdrawn from it; not that it was all that captivating, but I find myself listening to discussions with the distanced attention that you give when you aren't affected by the discussion. I find that I get just a little irritated when I hear people making the usual jokes and worrying about the usual things. Hey, I'm losing my job here, I want to say, and I think, a little shame-facedly, of how I've reacted to hearing that other people were losing their jobs over the years. I was sorry for them, but in much the same abstracted way that I now listen to discussions. I've said, and its true, that I am in a very good position when it comes to having to leave; I (we) have a goodly amount of money saved, we have plans to maintain our financial future, and I have the strong likelihood of being offered a roughly equivilent job doing things I like to do. I do firmly believe that most people are not so fortunate, and though in my heart I grieve for myself, I try hard to think about them, too.

When I think about 'what am I going to do', I am little overwhelmed by the possibility of not working, possibly ever again. (I don't call being the greeter at WalMart, the magazine-wagon pusher at the hospital, or anything like that 'working'.) What will I do with myself all that time? I know that 'retired' (I have difficulty seeing myself that way) people occasionally complain that for all the time they have, they still don't have enough to do all that they want to. I think I know why that is, but even if I don't, I suspect that finding things to do won't be too much of a problem. Finding substantive things to do -- things that matter, things that are worth it, emotionally if not financially -- that may be more difficult. I've never thought of myself as 'defined' by what I do, but maybe, a little, I am. If so, then I think that my future happiness is going to be seriously affected by how I view what 'me' really is. Not a programmer, not even if I do some programming. A father, a husband, certainly. What else? Because there needs to be something else, I think, maybe even many other somethings, to keep me from going sterile and dull.

And thats what I thought about in school today.

Noteworthy

Today makes just over three weeks that I've been doing the bike, every single morning. I am not doing anything remarkable from the perspective of those people you see on the street in their custom-fit racing togs and ultra-lightweight bikes, but for me, it's pretty amazing. I find myself (almost) effortlessly getting up between 4:45 (any earlier, and I go back to sleep) and 5:30, trudging downstairs, turning on the VCR (this morning it was Top Gun; the last few days its been The American President), and pedaling for sixteen minutes. That's a psychological barrier; the timer on the bike is a series of LEDs, sixteen of them, so 'naturally' thats an exercise increment. I contemplated going longer or harder, this morning, and I picked harder -- intensity four instead of three. Again, this is nothing remarkable, but for me, yes, somewhat. In fact, I am now at the point where, when I finally have to skip a day, maybe because I am staying at a motel that does not have an exercise bike (let alone a recumbent one), I think its going to irritate me. I want to start thinking about what to do in that case so that I don't lose the momentum. I know myself well enough that I can't afford to cut myself slack unless there really was no other choice. And since I am not an exerciser, the idea of 'well, just walk five miles' or ' just do thiry minutes of (fill in the blank)' doesn't appeal to me.

I am getting a prescription for a mild tranquilizer from the local doc. I don't know what it is; she told me, but after I rattled off what SSRI stood for, she apparently thought that I'd know the chemical name for what she was writing up, and I totally don't. I do know that its very mild -- she said its nowhere near as strong as Valium, which sounded right to me. She asked if I felt tense, and I said yes, somewhat; then she asked if I felt depressed, and I said 'not from a clinical perspective'. I have taken this kind of drug once before, and remember thinking 'gee, this stuff isn't working' before realizing much later that I hadn't felt tense for a while. I didn't feel giddy, which was what I expected (cheerful all the time). I think thats what Valium does. Anyway, I pick it up today, in time for the first phase of the dental surgery, which occurs on Monday.

I'm glad that we sold the car so easily. It feels a little odd not to have it -- I saw an electric blue Regal the other day, and thought hey, there's my wife -- but it was the right thing to do. And we sold my company stock, too. I don't really think it'll go up (though I hear that the prevailing opinion of those bloodless ghouls on Wall Street is that firing thousand is a wonderful idea, lets bid up the stock), but it doesn't matter. It was more a psychological separation. I shall not miss this company.... much.

Tea Leaves

I'm not all that good as a reader of tea leaves, but I find myself wondering if the statements lately by the the Bushster and Dickman are intended to lay the groundwork for later saying that of course this thing in Iraq is going to take years, if not longer; everyone knows that, we've been saying it forever. And of course its not possible to have a time table, because that would imply that we control that environment, whereas everyone knows we're just there as advisors. And cannon fodder.

Peanut Butter Utter

This JIF Peanut Butter & Honey is pretty good stuff. Smooth, creamy, nice honey taste.

Reading

I have never read Sun Tzu's The Art of War all the way through. I've read explanations of the concepts, and I've read interpretations, but I've never read the whole thing. I suspect that a fairly decent college or adult-ed could be put together based on an examination and amplification of the concepts in that thin book. Whats ironic to me is that insofar as the book speaks tightly about situations and how to handle them, through recognition of the situation as belonging to a certain archetype, its exactly the kind of book I like -- short and sweet, with a tight focus on the essentials. But I've never read it.

Similarly, I've never read Machiavelli's The Prince, and my chagrin about that is about equal to not having read TAOW. I can, however, say that I intend to, as when I was at the bookstore last week, and picked up a couple of cut-price science fiction collections, I saw a whole slew of The Prince reprints in thin binding, and I picked one up. Once I get through the first scifi novel, I intend to read that.

What brings this all to mind is a review I read of a book called The Four Hour Workweek, which apparently (I haven't read it) makes the point that much of what makes life delightful is in fact achievable if you're willing to give it some serious thought -- not as part of a 'oh wouldn't it be nice if we could do that some day' daydream, such as we all have, but a serious 'damn, but I'd like to fly in a glider -- how could I make that happen?' Its much the same message as The Number gave -- happiness doesn't necessarily require a lot of money; sometimes yes, but sometimes no -- you just have to think about it, and focus on it.

Which reminds me: that guy hasn't given me The Number back yet, that I loaned him. Have to talk to him -- I want to reread part of it.

Cool Morning

Its just before breakfast time. Running a little late -- the laptop didn't want to start, and the email server was (and still is) down. That wouldn't be a big deal but that I was planning to send that company a note to acknowledge their invitation, and to set up travel arrangements. Guess I'll be doing this by phone.

Still not sure about the job, though. More accurately: the circumstances of the job. The job itself sounds like a lot of fun. A lot of work, but a lot of fun. The travel thing, though... I don't have a problem with travel; I have a problem with frequent travel -- by which I mean, weeks in a row. Occasionally, sure. Routinely, no. I don't want to be away from home that much. I like it here. I like it even more than I'd like earning more money, and thats a big deal to me. Were I one of these power negotiators that you see in Fast Company or wherever, I could likely arrange it in a slick manner... but as I'm not, I'll just be honest with them, tell them I'd like to work for them, but I have some restrictions. If they can handle it, good. If they say sorry, no dice -- well, okay.

Best I can do.

=====================
Apparently, these guys are serious. They asked to delay bringing me out there until the CEO is back, so that I can meet him.

Decision

Tomorrow I call them and arrange to come out to their offices on Friday. Assuming they offer me the job, I will

• ask for a salary in the low to mid eighties, negotiable down to high seventies
• if salary is negotiated, ask for four to six weeks unpaid leave each year; otherwise, ask for two weeks unpaid leave
  
• insist on travel in the roughly fifty percent per month range
• ask for a week at home between each week away, negotiable if the distance is far

...and may the force be with me.

Take It...

Well, things are moving along. I just got a phone message from the people I'm talking to, telling me that they'd like me to fly out to their corporate headquarters to chat. They want to 'take it to the next level'.

Why am I nervous? Um.... because I think that there is no way in the world they'll pay me what I'd like, and even if they did, I won't like being away as often as they'd want?

What a wimp!

Custom Cleaners Defense Fund

This site is accepting donations to the defense fund for a cleaners in Washington DC which is being sued by a Washington judge for an obscene amount of money because they lost his pants. How much?

Sixty five million dollars.


(I'll pause while you pick up whatever you dropped.)


The site accepts PayPay and other donation media.

Quik Thts

I was just out in the kitchen, and the following thoughts occured to me.

-- If I am offered and take this job, much of it would be doing things that I almost certainly can do, but not all of it. And I don't have the breadth of knowledge those other guys do. On the other hand, I've been up front about that.

-- It would certainly be a job outside of my comfort zone, in just about every possible way. Thats not necessarily a bad thing.

-- It would likely pay well. Not extremely well, but I'm guessing half again what I earn now. That would be nice, both for repaying the dental work, and for giving my wife some breathing room if things go south at her job. In fact, if this job worked out, she could actually bail entirely from there. (Some major assumptions in there, of course.)


My inclination is to take it. These kinds of decisions ought to be more black and white, though.

Speaking of which: at the DMV, the clerk told me and the guy who was buying our old car that we could not just transfer the plates -- only inside-the-family transfers could do that. (Makes no sense to me.) I pointed to the guy buying it and said 'But we're clearly related!' He's black. I'm white. The clerk almost lost it, she was laughing so hard.

=============

Update: No, it doesn't necessarily pay all that well. Apparently, the fellow who started the company is quite tight with a buck. I was advised to ask for what I want, and then some, because they will begrudge any raises afterward. Fortunately, I don't need this job.... I'd just like it. So, I can ask for whatever I want. Worst case, they fall off the chair laughing.

Cadillac

I'd never consider buying a Cadillac.

But this ad (its at the bottom of the page; I didn't know where to find it, or how to link it) comes pretty damned close.

Further...

I just had the telephone interview.

According to the corporate guy who immediately called me back, it went very well -- he said that he got very positive response from the techie I talked to. Now they want me to talk to a second one, and if that one goes well, they'll want to 'take this discussion to the next level' -- which I think means going out to their corporate headquarters and doing a face to face discussion with them. And probably shortly thereafter, a job offer.

This scares me.

These people are good. I mean, good. They don't just know the environment, they know the environment and how it works with dozens of different other products. They know what its supposed to look like when it works and what its supposed to do, exactly. They know this stuff cold. Each of them has over twenty years working in this specific area; some have thirty. I have six. I'm good, but I'm no where near that good. I'm good like a minor league pitcher who can usually strike out a batter. These people are major league, and they're throwing heat. Use whatever analogy you want -- the pro's from Dover, the A Team, SWAT. They're outstandingly good. Me? I just know a few things.

Criminy. This scares me. I'm not (much) afraid of the challenge. I'm afraid of failing, big time.

As a side note, I'm not too thrilled about the working environment, which is, apparently, two and three weeks in a row of travel, over and over -- and on the customer site, its just you, no one else. You're expected to Know It All. I think I can hack that -- but I'm not sure. Maybe I'm being wimpy here, but I actively like being at home a lot with my family. I knew this job involved travel, and even frequent. This seems like more than frequent. Verging on obsessive, in fact. I do want to earn money to pay back for the dental work (though my wife says I don't have to). But at what cost?

I thought my career was winding up. I thought I'd end up staying home, baking bread, making dinner. This is more like starting a brand new career. Am I up for that? Can I handle that?

Though it sure does sound like fun.....

Moderate Improvements

a) The car is sold. Did he try to con me? No -- but he certainly could have. He brought cash, and just handed it to me. I looked a bit at it, then put it in my pocket. Didn't count it. I figured -- well, truth to tell, nothing. I'm a trusting guy. But yes, I did when I got home. All there.

b) The appointment is made with the plastic surgeon for the bone 'harvest'. This will just be the consultation -- a chance for a different doctor to scare the willies out of me. And my checkbook.

c) I did call the local doc and ask for a mild tranquilizer. No response yet, but at this precise moment.... its okay.

Got Rhythm?

People who are relentlessly rational would likely tell me I'm wrong, but I'm beginning to think that there is something to this biorhythms concept. Granted, you don't hear all that much about it lately, or even for the last five years, but perhaps its just entered the general consciousness as something thats generally accepted.

What leads me to this is the feeling that when things go wrong, they tend to go wrong in bunches. Some of that, I think, might be because when they go wrong one at a time, you can handle them, and, having done so, they go away and you usually forget about them. But when they arrives in groups, you're a little (or a lot) beaten down by them, and those are the ones you remember. Like now. I don't think that what I'm going through is anything remarkable -- I doubt anyone will be holding a fund-raising event for me in the near future -- but because its me, it feels remarkable. Groups of things don't normally go wrong for me, so I'm not experienced in handling them en masse. A friend uses as a tag line a phrase to the effect that she tries to take problems one at a time, but sometimes they gang up on her. I know the feeling.

A Peanuts strip from years ago shows Charlie Brown being consoled after losing yet another game. Linus says 'Some you win, some you lose, Charlie Brown.' And Charlie Brown replies, with wonderment 'Some you win?'

Monday Ayem

Once again, I did the bike. I haven't been keeping track, but its been, I think, about two and a half weeks. I actually had the thought that if this company hires me, I'll have to find hotels with recumbent bikes so that I can continue to do this. Or find something else to do that has the same benefit. The reading this morning was actually bad, but there's an explanation: it was very low last night, and I compensated too much. I'm not concerned. Well, much.

Similarly, its a week till I do -- finally -- the first phase of the dental procedure, which will include inserting some Bio-Oss when the teeth are extracted. Some period for that to heal, and then off to the plastic surgeon to do the iliac bone harvesting (doesn't that sound non-invasive and almost cheerful?). Then comes the part I'm worried about: putting it in. There's no guarantee that it will 'take'; though its more likely with my own bone, its not a given. If it doesn't work, then the whole plan has to be rethought. The dentist hasn't given me odds, but my take, just reading his moods as we talk, is that there is about an 80% chance of success. Think good thoughts...

The Prius continues to be a delight -- yesterday morning, my daughter and I took that to church instead of the van As we drove away, she said 'You really like this car, don't you?', and I nodded. Its not perfect, but there are enough small things to like about it that I'm surprised when a design defect (as I see it) comes to light. As for the Buick, if all works out, the guy who wants to buy it will do so today. That'll be nice to have done.

Ascetics, Not

We are not ascetics.

Even though we have an electric lawn mower. And a hybrid electric/gas car. And no ice cream at all in the freezer, but rather a pseudo ice cream (soy 'Divine Strawberry', which we have not yet tried, and sorbet,which we have). And my wake-up-from-the-nap snack, just now, was, of all things, Special-K. We are not ascetics.

We do have an unopened bag of Oreos. Perhaps I'll go have a half dozen. That'll help me be more cheeful, right? Anything for my readers. Reader. Whatever.

The things I do!

Breezy

It's a chilly, windy day here. I don't like it. If it were warm, I still wouldn't like it. Even if I were in a decent mood -- which does happen on occasion -- I wouldn't. I've never liked particularly windy days -- the kind that rattle the windows and swirl the leaves. Not sure why.

Of course, even if it were a quiet, mild day, I'd be a bit off, due to whats going on. I'm feeling a goodly amount of stress, and I can't seem to shake it. When I'm tense, I have no calming routines. Never have. I've never been able to do that. Years ago, when I worked at my prior company (as distinct from my current company which is about to become my prior company, dammit, and I'm still angry about that - how angry? We have a program called Thanks where you can be given freebies -- shirts, tools, etc -- with the company logo; I like working here, someone gifted me with an award, yet I cannot bring myself to get anything, because it has that logo, and I don't want to be reminded of it) -- anyway, at the predecessor company, I was once under a lot of stress, and I blew up at someone. I didn't go postal, but I spoke loudly and firmly (and, I suppose, somewhat angrily) to someone trying to interrupt me while I was doing something. As I recall, I said that they should wait, that I had to finish something, and then I would get to them; as they recall (I got this from someone else), they said that they weren't going to come back to me again unless they had a stick. Which quite surprised me. I ended up going to a local psychology service for a short while, to try to learn how to handle stress, but it didn't take. I still recall when the woman asked me how I relax, and I had to stop and think, before saying 'well.... I read'. She replied, dryly, " I can just hear the pleasure in your voice."

The only thing that ever works is for me to sit quietly, with my eyes closed, and just breathe in and out, in and out, in and out. That doesn't usually work, but sometimes it does.

How stressed do I feel right now? I can't bring myself to read even the interesting articles in todays paper. Maybe later.

==============
Going for a drive helped.

In Flight

The things that have been going on, which I mentioned in an earlier post, are still going on. They've started, they haven't ended, and they weren't cancelled. They're 'in flight'.

The guy who called to see the car liked what he saw. My concern about whether he might be someone who would try to steal it was abated when I realized he was driving a minivan, and he had his mother, his wife, and his niece in there. No one who's contemplating Grand Theft Auto comes so encumbered, I think. Plus, when he got out of the van, I thought 'Tiger Woods?' No -- but he could be a body double. He wants to arrange for a friend of his to come out and check the car over for him, which is reasonable, and he also wants to do a VIN check. He called after he left, asking for that, and I read it off to him -- though as it happens, I misread one of the values, which was an L, not an I . He'll figure it out.

The job hunt is also in flight. I did not get to talk to the tech from the company where I want to work, though I expect to on Monday. They seemed pretty hot to get rolling, when we spoke. As for me, no earlier than May 31, unless they want to pay me the three months of severance that my current company's going to pay -- and, truth to tell, I want to take some time off. I'm still a little queasy about the travel idea -- I accept that it's necessary, but I really, really don't want to do it frequently. Though it also depends: if they say 'we want you to travel two weeks a month to Schenectady', I'd wince...but if they say 'we want you to travel two weeks a month to England... Canada... Europe' -- I'd smile. First, though, I have to get to the 'we want you' part of the sentence.

The dental stuff is now about a week from starting. The closer I get, the more apprehensive I get. I want it done, done, done.

Basically, I want this 'in flight stuff' to quit it and land , already.

Shore!

If you follow the talk about the movement of jobs overseas, which is usually called something like 'off shoring', 'right shoring', 'near shoring', and the like, you know that the concept is simple. Any work that can be done without hands on or face to face contact can be shipped away from the point of delivery. Radiologists in Iceland can read XRays that were taken in Uganda. People in a room in Honolulu can answer the speakers for drive-ins in Montana. Computer programmers in India can write code for programs running in Canada to handle health claims in the United States for people from Mexico doing work for people in the United Kingdom. Its the global economy, and it scares me. It is, in a large way, the reason I've lost my job, and others have and will continue to do so. Its not a bad thing... but its not a good thing, either. Opposition to the concept is usually portrayed as that of a Luddite, or someone who just can't hack it in fair competition. I oppose it because I don't think it's fair. By which I mean, fair to me, and to people like me.

An article on the Economist's View weblog quotes an article from the Washington Post: Free Trade's Great, But Offshoring Rattles Me, written by Alan Blinder. He basically says that the concept is clearly good for global trade, and the companies that practice it, but its just as clearly not good for workers who've put time and effort into arriving where they are on the socioeconomic ladder, because we have poor safety nets in place for people negatively affected by such moves, and we have poor educational systems to ensure, or at least make likely, that the people here continue to be at the top of the food chain when it comes to whose work gets outsourced where. The article is worth reading.

As for me, I like the observation I've seen in multiple places to the effect that the CEOs who like off-shoring work never seem to feel that their own job should be outsourced.

Observation

Warning -- if you're planning on reading Executive Orders, this contains some spoilers.

I've been rereading Executive Orders lately. I don't have much insight into why the book appeals to me -- certainly, some of it is the classic 'guy fiction, good guys vs bad guys, seriously high technology that works all the time, or close as makes no difference' -- but I like it, and there are times when I just want to read something that relaxes me. By comparision, I'm also reading a book I had given my daughter, who said its a bit dense for her -- The Ruby in the Smoke, by Philip Pullman; I thought she'd like it, as he wrote the Amber Spyglass series, which, though a bit odd, was excellent -- and as it turns out, its a bit dense for me, too -- and I'm also reading Count Belasarius, a novel about a Roman noble back two thousand years ago; its good, but I have to work to remember who's who, and whats going on. With EO, that doesn't happen, so its my default reading for the moment. The other night, leafing through it, I realized that this book more or less describes the presidency that George Bush wishes he had.

There's the President - tall in the saddle, jes' folks but dogged, forthright, and scrupulously honest, purer than anyone else around. He has the warm friendship and slightly awestruck admiration of military men and women from the lowliest grunt who lends him a cigarette at Camp David to the people in the Secret Service who've seen 'em all, and genuinely like this guy and his family. There's a lethal, truly evil bad guy and his amoral minions -- an ayatollah, yet; no one's liked that sound since the Iranian hostage crisis thirty years ago -- as well as a host of other slippery international types, most of whom are Not To Be Trusted. He has a Congress that was decimated by a terrorist attack, not to mention most of the heads of agencies, and so he gets to rebuild them, either directly, appointing right-thinking people who, dammit, just want to cut to the chase and get the job done, no bureaucratic folderol, or indirectly, by encouraging people to elect replacements who are not professional politicians, but real people like them who want to come in, get the job done, and go back to the plough. His wife is a brilliant surgeon, his kids are to die for, and even the people who dislike him, at least inside the country, do so with a rueful admiration of his grasp of the common touch, startled by the fact that he seems to be a genuinely humble man. And at the end, he not only gets to use a combination of intrepid secret agents, stealth aircraft, and precision weaponry to blow the ayatollah and his immediate minions to kingdom come, and on national TV, yet, but he also gets to grimly promise that unless the people who executed some particularly heinous acts are delivered to him in twelve hours, he will order a nuclear attack to level the city. Don't think I won't, he says, staring into the camera, because I will. Count on it. You can just see the steely glint in his eye. Don't mess with this guy.

Wow, George must say. That's me!

Jittery

For some reason, I've been jittery lately. Can't imagine why.

• Upcoming major dental surgery, described as 'sophisticated surgery'
• Realization that a whole second bout will be needed afterward
• Leaving my current job, abruptly.
• Looking for a new job; having an interview with a new company, having to sell myself to them (which I hate); new people, new responsibilities, and the high likelihood of at least two weeks a month away from home
• Selling the old car: can we trust the buyer to have given us a real certified check? Or not defraud us somehow?
  
• Generally feeling like everything I can count on and expect is shifting... and that somehow, its my fault. Course, some of it is.
  

Whats to be jittery about?

==================
Update a little later: All the areas that I'm jittery about, I'm doing reasonable, adult things to handle. It just that rational reactions don't seem to cancel out emotional reactions. I think, in a way, that this is why I like to bake: I control the environment, from start to finish. Nothing outside affects it. If it works, I did it; if it doesn't, I can see why, and I can fix it -- if not that time, then the next. That's worth something, I think.

Made this this morning, had them with fresh strawberries and strawberry jam. (Some day I really have to get the strawberry jam recipe our neighbor used to welcome us to the neighborhood ....twenty five years ago.)

Momentously good buttermilk biscuits

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (more for shaping dough)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
8 tablespoons (1 stick) very cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup very cold buttermilk
Yields about 18 2-inch biscuits

Heat oven to 500 degrees F. and position a rack in the center. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Put dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and whisk to distribute them evenly.

1. Cut up butter and toss with flour

With a sharp knife, cut the cold butter lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Stack three or four slices and cut them into three even strips. Then cut the strips in half several times to make many butter bits. Toss butter bits into the flour mixture. Continue cutting all the butter in the same manner and adding it to the flour. Then use your fingers to separate the butter bits, coat each one with flour, and distribute them all throughout the mixture. Don't rub the butter too hard, or it will melt.

2. Give it a little stir

When all the butter is evenly distributed, add the cold buttermilk and stir until the flour is absorbed by the buttermilk and the dough forms a coarse lump, about 1 minute.

3. Pat and fold dough

Dust a work surface with flour and dump the dough onto it. Dust the top of the dough and your hands with flour, and press the dough into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle. Sprinkle a bit of extra flour on the top of the dough. Fold the dough over on itself in three sections, as if folding a letter.

With a metal spatula, lift the dough off the counter and dust under it with flour to prevent sticking. Dust the top with flour and press the dough out again into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle and repeat the trifold. Repeat this procedure once more .

4. Cut biscuits and bake

After the third trifold, dust flour under and on top of the dough, if needed, and roll or press the dough into a 1/2-inch-thick oval. Dip a biscuit cutter or a glass into flour and start cutting biscuits, dipping the cutter in flour between each biscuit. Transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet, spacing them about 1/2 inch apart. Gather any scraps of dough, roll 'em out again, and keep pressing biscuits until dough is gone.

Put the baking sheet in the oven and reduce the heat to 450 degrees F. Bake for 8 minutes; rotate the pan 180 degrees and bake for 4 to 6 more minutes until biscuit tops and bottoms are golden brown. Remove pan from oven, and set it on a cooling rack. Cool biscuits for at least 3 minutes and serve hot or warm.

Source: Adapted from the April/May issue of Fine Cooking magazine.

Effluvia

I've been going through my file cabinet, tossing items that I doubt anyone will want. Keeping the stuff no one should want, but due to paranoia, probably will; tossing the rest. Doing it slowly, because it might happen that a job opens up in this company (quite unlikely). And because doing it reminds me of why I'm doing it, and that makes me sad. Not weeping in my lunch sad (nothing so uncool as a soggy tuna sandwich), but still: sad.

==========
Talked with the Chief Operating guy, who, amazingly enough, appears to really BE that. He sounded pretty interested, and said it sounds like what I want to do is what they need people to do. He's going to have a techie call me so they can check out my bona fides and such. They'll want to know if I'm a good person to have working there; I'll want to know if I'd like being there. I'll also want to know how hard they'll want me to work, how much I'll have to travel (and how far), and how much they'll pay me. I'd like a) moderately, sometimes intensely, b) two weeks a month, three to five days per week, with occasional international travel, and c) a striking amount - say, twenty percent more than I'm making now.

I know of no way to ask those questions in a casual manner.

Cool

Its just about 6AM, and once again I DTBd. Still don't like it (sorry, Kelli), but I can't deny that something is having a positive effect on my health, and I'm willing to say that this is it. My morning measurement for all but two days of the last two weeks has been excellent, and for those two days, it was explainable. I even backed off on night insulin last night, again, and this morning was fine. Don't know how far down I can ride that horse -- my guess is, about two notches -- and I know, as sure as God made little green apples, there will be times when it rockets up for no apparent reason -- but at the moment, things look pretty good, and I'm pleased by them. Some weight loss would be good, too, but this is a heck of a start.

I am finding that I am usually sanguine about losing my job at the end of the month. Not happy, of course -- I'm a creature of habit, and I don't want to be forced to stop doing what I've been doing for the last five years -- but the fact that there is at least one alternative thats fairly palatable -- staying home full time and taking care of things -- makes it easier. I expected to be in that mode in one to two years; the benefit of that is that having it happen now means its not coming completely out of the blue.

Of course, I will pursue working elsewhere, as I mentioned. I like earning money. Do I think the people who emailed me with a response last night will come through with a job offer? I doubt it. That would be a very nice thing, akin to the job hunting strategies that Fast Company, etc advocate actually paying off, and I've never been able to make that style of behavior pay off. I have some thoughts about that, but the bottom line is what we like to say about magazines, generally: the reason they write about something is because its unusual, which means that it's not likely to happen to you, buddy. But I'll certainly pursue it, because I like most of what I know about the company, and because they'd be a good company to work for, doing stuff that I like to do. One or two other alternatives exist, too, though they're of lesser likelihood than that one, which doesn't speak particularly well for their probability of success.

But overall, in toto, I am feeling pretty good about all of this. So far, anyway. Check with me again in two weeks. I expect to be fairly glum, right about then....

Minor News

I got an email from someone who says that he is the Chief Operating Officer for the company to which I'd sent the resume, saying that he wants to talk to me.

I am not the level of people who gets calls from Chief Operating Officers, even for small companies. So what I'm guessing is that this guy is actually one of their recruiters, and that they all get to call themselves that, or something similar. Nevertheless, it is a call-back, so sure, I'll talk to them.

One odd thing. My employment here is slated to run out at the end of the month. At that time, I get three months of pay, free. I was planning on taking a month or so off before looking for work. Do I tell them that?

Maybe I'd better wait to see if they actually make me an offer, hmm?

============
Trying dropping the insulin number another skosh, tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Commander Guy

That's a quote from the Bushman, by the way, about which, enough said.

I'm assuming that my job hunt within the company that I currently work for isn't going to pan out. There are a lot of job postings, but they seem to be roughly forty percent 'we want a salesman', twenty percent 'we want a hypertech', twenty percent 'we want someone with a very, very obscure speciality', fifteen percent a mix of the first three (we want a hypertech-aware sales capable person who can work with a product no one has ever heard of), and five percent 'reasonable'. None of them (at least, the ones that I looked at) are really much of a match for me. I'm trying, though.

I also sent a resume to a vendor we deal with; they said they like it, and wanted to set up a phone interview. I'd be happier about that except that we did the phone interview thing once before, and no job offer resulted. But what the heck, if they're willing, so am I. And I got the name of a local computer services company that is, mirable dictu, staffed predominantly by people who used to work for this company. What the person who told me about it said was 'they pay very well....and you earn every penny'. Worth a look.

So there are... possibilities. As well as my wife's, which is: I stay home, keep the house clean, cook dinner three or four nights a week, and occasionally bake bread. I can do that, too.

Some good news: I now believe that doing the bike every morning (been about three weeks now) is having an effect. I have been able to back off a skosh on the insulin that I use, and I am still getting excellent blood sugar readings. I am pleased. I'd like it more if I was perceptable thinner, but if my theory about insulin bears out, that will happen. And even if it doesn't, using less drugs, even just a little less, is a Good Thing.

Commander guy. Sheesh.

Organizational Strangeness

I don't recall the exact quote -- something like 'its a tragedy when your neighbor loses his house, but a disaster when you do' -- but I get the impression that something very odd is going on in this company. I didn't think it was just me, and this morning I got confirmation when I learned that three people whom I consider very qualified are being terminated, too. But the piece de resistance is when I just learned that the only secretary here is being terminated as well. The only one!

Maybe its time to sell my stock?

BS

Which in this case stands for But Still....

I'm still in a bit of shock over the news from this morning. I've done some of the Right Things -- wrote to two or three people who might know of jobs where I want to be, applied for two jobs which are kind of related to what I know -- so thats goodness. But still...

Bit shocked. And thats not BS.

Further Strangeness

I may have mentioned on occasion the transient feeling that 'I wish someone would just fire me, just to force me out of this rut'. Well.... we don't call it 'firing', and its not just me, but I learned this morning that my division isn't holding its own when it comes to profits, so we're alerting a whole bunch of people that they could be declared 'redundant', as the saying goes... and I'm one of them. I have until the end of the month, and if I don't find a different job, I'm out of there.

This is actually not as catastrophic an event as it might sound, because our plan was that I would work until the end of the year, or possibly next June, before leaving, and as they have a marginally generous separation package, I'd likely only lose between three and nine months pay -- not to mention, getting the summer off with pay, which I have to admit would be kind of nice. I'd rather not leave, just because earning money is better than not, but if I have to -- we'll do all right - even if we did think 'What? The day AFTER we bought a new car?'

Timing is everything, I guess.

Tuesday Morn

I've now been doing the bike in the morning for about two weeks, every single day. Nothing frantic, but still -- every day, from someone who absolutely hates to get up early. As I like to say, I really don't mind getting up early, so long as I can do it late in the day. And I have seen results.

I've gained four pounds.

(Pause for a bemused moment)

Knowing nothing -- well, very little -- about the Way This Stuff Works, here's what I think. I know that taking insulin contributes to weight gain. I know that exercise can result in less insulin needed (probably not a lot, but still: some). What if the exercise is contributing to me actually needing less insulin, and the extra isn't being used, but is contributing to this effect?

Heck, I don't know, could be. So last night, I deliberately took less than I normally take -- and this morning, the morning reading was dramatically lower. I had thought that if I was wrong, it'd be higher, and if I was right, it'd be about where it's been in the morning. But lower? That startled me.

I think its a fluke -- but I'm going to try it again tonight. Worst case, it'll go up. I can handle that.

Concluding

Day's winding down. A little on the stressful side. Nothing abnormal -- well, except for the dental stuff. The dealer forgot to give us the second set of keys, so my wife has to stop and pick them up on the way in tomorrow. She said she had no problem driving or accelerating, except for one odd one: when she was accelerating, there were no physical or audio cues to tell her that she was going faster, so she actually ended up going faster than she wanted. Not a big problem. In a day or so, I'll give it a spin.

No one's bought our old car yet. I thought the ad would get immediate results. Guess not.

Sorry for the light content.

Hemodynamic Insufficiency

I was just using StumbleUpon, and came on a page of Critical Care tutorials which included this:

If hemodynamic insufficiency is caused by vasoplegia (pathological vasodilation), fluid depletion or sequestration or low stroke volume, the initial intervention is usually to fluid load. If an acute ischemia event has occurred, revascularization by PTCA (angioplasty) or thrombolysis is indicated (1). If there is a significant amount of non functioning, stunned or hibernating myocardium, intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation may be utilized – perfusing the brain and coronary arteries in diastole (2). Norepinephrine may be used to raise diastolic blood pressure and thus improve coronary artery perfusion. If the patient is vasoplegic, following fluid resuscitation, a vasopressor such as dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine or phenylephrine is administered. If a potent inotrope is required, to improve cardiac contractility, dobutamine is the most effective drug. In patients with hypotension, cause unknown, epinephrine will re-establish a circulation, with the cost of perhaps worsening a lactic acidosis and reducing gut perfusion.

I don't really understand this -- its just a hobby -- but the parts that I understand, I really like. Because I love knowing things like this, and because treating the body as a series of interconnected systems whose performance can be measured, evaluated, and, if necessary, corrected -- just makes so much sense to me.

Oh, and what I think thats saying is, if blood pressure isn't high enough,you want to get blood in there, pronto, and you might have to physically open paths via a 'sewer snake' or drugs.

I think.

Dental Conversations

Yet another meeting with the dentist and staff. No real bad news, and some good news.

Good news first. He now thinks he can bump his overall price down another notch - not a big number, but any number greater than zero... - and he thinks that the work by the plastic surgeon might turn out to be be covered as well.

He does seem to be a little apprehensive about the grafting surgery, though, referring to it as 'fairly sophisticated' work. Funny, they didn't use that word anywhere in the cheerful literature in his waiting room. My impression is that he thinks it will work, and provide him with enough underlying bone to be able to do what he wants to do, but he's not positive of it. If it doesn't, the chances of success go way down.

So, we'll press on, and see what happens. I tell my wife that I always assumed I'd end up with dentures, and if thats the way it goes, so be it. Might end up with a hybrid -- implants on the sides, denture in the middle. I could live with that.

I just want to get it done.

Closer

Its not quite official...but its pretty close. We did a timed acceleration test, and it just about matched what the minivan does, so that's okay. And the daughteroid's color guard pole, which we brought along, fit inside, no prob. The color is sandy -- I think the buzzword is 'Sandy Pearl' or somesuch. It does not have the electronic map, since neither of us was willing to pay about $1500 more for it, though that would have also gotten an upgraded stereo and some leather. It does have the backup camera, which my daughter likes -- in fact, she said that she totally thought we should get the car, period. We thought so, too, so we signed the papers saying that we intend to buy one. Had our bank been open now, we could have done the deal right then, and truth to tell, we could have transferred the funds electronically (Press one to spend more money than you should for a car you don't really, really need....), but we didn't want to do that. So, Monday night, we'll all troupe back there, take a deep breath, give them the big honkin' cheque, and hey, presto.... Then we've just got to sell the Buick, for which the ad starts Monday.

Kewl!

Mown Down

If you take a certain electric mower, and have at grass that is both thick and damp..... don't expect to be out there all that long.

Aftermath

Last night, I attended a celebratory dinner for the color guard in which my daughter participates. The event was quite nice, and the location was spectacular. More about that, later.

There were about a hundred fifty people fairly crammed into the room where the potluck dinner was being held. What a pot! The table with the 'real' food was about two feet wide and stretched for about thirty feet, solidly packed -- salads (including our delightful Strawberry Salad with feta cheese and slivered almonds; yum), tons of fried chicken, courtesy of the kitchen at WalMart (who knew they sold that stuff?) , cold cut trays, and four or five different kinds of meatballs, including some that were easily as good as ours (lacking only the cheese that we think makes ours special). That last is what I scarfed up on, making myself two meatball subs to go along with that salad. And, of course, desserts, the good news of which was that its dedicated table was ten feet from us, the bad news of which was that the girls found it very quickly. I didn't have any, but it was not for lack of trying.

They showed videos of the year, and various candids, while people ate, and afterwards they gave out awards. My daughter won 'Most Improved', which, given that she was working with the Junior Guard, the youngest, is sort of like kissing your sister, but it came with a teddy bear, so she was happy - and both my wife and I got a nice little giftie for helping out (I was quite surprised, as all I did was come once, but what the heck). And then, the speeches, about which I will just say the line that I repeated a couple of times on the way home: I love you guys! I love you guys!

Man, but teenage girls can get emotional. Crying and sobbing and gasping... Guys are different. Guys would have just gotten up there and said "Um..thanks. " And then muttered something obscene to the person standing next to them.

Though there was the one girl who said that when she first met the guard instructor, she seriously thought that there was something mentally wrong with her. That's a guyish comment. But by the end of the year, she said, she had three numbers on speed dial: her mother, her boyfriend, and that instructor.

And then there was.... the location. O. M. G.

The event was held in a meeting room of what we call the supermegachurchplex -- a huge building that we'd driven by several times, but never been into. It's owned by a local Evangelical Free Church which used to be in a relatively small building, and decided that they needed room to grow. Right now, they have enough room to grow for the next, oh, four hundred years. Its a massive rectangular building with a central core housing the church proper, and a series of function rooms around the outside, including three different food stations (including a complete kids cafeteria), classrooms, offices, a gymnasium, a large auditorium, a helipad...okay, no helipad. The walkway around the central core is about, oh, a quarter mile, maybe a bit less. All of it gleaming.

It is, if you're a church architect, to die for.

Oh, and this morning? Eyes popped open way too early.... so I DTBd. Again. It would be nice if I lost some weight, but what the heck. Its likely good for me, anyway.

Progressions

" Vice President Cheney today lashed out at congressional Democrats for passing a war-funding bill that mandates troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying opponents of the four-year-old conflict are playing into the hands of the al-Qaeda ..."

"Vice President Cheney today lashed out at congressional Democrats for passing a war-funding bill that mandates troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying opponents of the four-year-old conflict are thinking for themselves, which he finds quite irritating ..."

"Vice President Cheney today lashed out at congressional Democrats, demanding that the Congress be disbanded and set out into the fields to harvest crops along with the other dissident intellectuals ..."

Statement

I would just like to say that I deny any wrongdoing in this matter. Although I am sorry about what has occurred, and I am sorry that some people feel the way that they do, I continue to maintain that I have done nothing wrong. When all the relevant facts are fully disclosed, I believe my innocence will be clear. I fully believe that I can continue to be effective in this office, in which I am proud to serve. I have no plans to resign. Those who for political reasons have sought to damage my reputation, and that of a blameless young woman with whom my relationship has at no time been improper, must bear responsibility for the hurt they have caused to me and my family. It would be inappropriate for me to comment further this time, as I have been advised me not to discuss this matter further in public until the facts can be fully presented. But I believe that ultimately I will be fully vindicated. We will refute all of the disgraceful allegations about us that have been spread by the more irresponsible sectors of the media. Finally, I am most grateful for the love and support of my family at this difficult time. Thank you.

(giggle)

...from Language Log....

Post Prandial Thoughts

I just finished reading Executive Orders, which turned out to be better than anticipated. As you might expect, the politicians in it certainly stood up well in comparison to our real ones -- in the book, they are almost uniformly bright, energetic, forthright, and, above all, honest. While not shrinking from danger or the application of violence, they are entirely pure of heart and noble of purpose. For a competing view, I recommend Mr. Stephanopolous' book, which portrays professional politicians in a much darker light, most interested in what benefits them and their party. Sporadically and on a recurring basis, interested in other things, and on rare occasion genuinely trying to improve the lot of the people as a whole, but for the most part, scheming, plotting, smiling while slipping the knife in. And these were the good guys -- the ones I voted for, and would vote for again.

It brings to mind the words of President Kennedy, when he said that we would bear any burden, fight any foe in the defense of liberty. I was moved by those words, and I would like to think that if I heard them now, I would be as moved -- but what I think would actually happen would be that I would try not to snicker as I listened, wondering what really would happen -- and suspecting that whatever happened, it would be much the same as what always happens -- bad people come to and stay in power, my government dithers, driven by politics and polls. Whats expedient in the short term always wins.

I don't know if I would actually like living in a world where the politicians were like those in this novel. No danger of me finding out any time soon, I suspect. Even if Obama got elected (he's most like those fictional pols, I think), he'd find it difficult to overcome. We like rhetoric about nobility. We just don't want to live that way.

Thursday

Thor's Day. I'd imagine that around Valhalla, if the morning felt as sluggish as this one, people would learn to duck, pretty quick, when they saw the Thunder God staggering out for his morning coffee, his mighty war hammer dangling loosely from one muscled wrist. Whats this crap? he would roar if the morning brew wasn't to his liking, and start whirling that thing into a blinding shield of corruscating energy that could level a mountain, hurling lightning bolts that fused the silverware and sent the place settings flying -- and then flinching as Odin bellowed What the hell is going on out there? Is that you again, Thor? I thought I told you to leave that axe back in your room until after breakfast!

Not that life is so...exciting, here. I got up, DTB'd, and now I'm cooking breakfast. We did get a tiny bit of good news yesterday -- the medical coverage for the bone graft is going to be several thousand dollars (which gives you an idea just how staggering the total cost is). Every little bit helps.

And we're going to get the Prius. We're down to color and options. I'd like Red (preferably Candy Apple Red, but they don't have that) or Silver; my wife just wants a light color. And the options will be minimal. The only one I'd like that we likelly will not get will be the digital map, which isn't that big a deal for an around-town vehicle.

Just a second, Thor, let me get you a refill.

US Constitution

I just found myself thinking about whether the Congress does actually have the authority to 'micromanage' the war, to use the White House's phrase, which lead me to wondering what the Constitution actually says. Turns out, what a surprise, a searchable and notated version is available -- here.

Cuppa Joe

I use a news aggregator called Feed Demon to scoop up sites that I like to look at on an irregular basis. (The ones I like to look at often are off to the left!) FD uses RSS, and some sites that I like don't have that. I tend to collect those into a folder and look at those sites periodically, but what I'd really like is a way to go open them all at once, every so often.

This freeware add for Firefox appears to do that.

Have the Body

I am not a supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union, as I believe they take too many liberties (pun intended) with the Constitution. I tend to disagree with their stances far more than I agree.

Which is why my delight in seeing this is sort of remarkable.

Checklists

Here's something I occasionally wonder about:

How much can automation do for you, if you have to have a person in the loop?

For example:

In one of the Star Trek movies, the automated system reads off items, and the crewman responds - "Main stage flux chiller" "ON" "Auxiliary thrusters" "OFF"...and so on. I'd think that it wouldn't take too much before the crewman learns that when you hear the sounds 'Main stage flux chiller', the response is 'ON' -- to the point where the crewman could do it in his sleep. He's not really checking it any more.

How do you keep that interactive alive, so that the person really is validating the environment?

Note

I have known for quite some time that I am very, very fortunate in the person I married.

Tonight we talked about the total cost of the dental work I am going to have done, which is more than one hundred percent higher than my initial estimate, and even my revised estimate. It stunned me.

She said: Do it anyway -- you're worth it.

How can you possibly repay that kind of support?

Not Exactly Sun Tsu

After dinner tonight (Bean Bake with Corn Bread; yum), my wife and I talked a little about an article I had read in the Washington Post. They had accompanied General Petraeus on a helicopter tour of Baghdad while he looked at the city, looking for signs of life, and signs otherwise. At one point, he said that it might be that Iraq would have to learn, as did Northern Ireland, to live with the concept of occasional violence. I was surprised by the bluntness of that assessment. I am not a military person, or a historian, but I thought he might well have something there. It'd be nice to get to a peaceful society, but perhaps thats not in the cards.

I don't think that the plan to have the Iraqi prime minister orchestrate an integrated Iraqi ownership of the environment is going to work -- at least, not along the lines that Bush lays out -- because I don't believe that the people there give a fig for democracy as a concept. What they want, I believe, is to wake up in the morning and be pretty sure that they're going to make it to the end of the day; anything at a higher level is immaterial to their daily lives. If thats done by democracy, fine; if thats done by local tyrants, equally fine. I have a hunch that after so long in a society where it really, really matters what your religion is, and you trust people more on the degree of consanguinity than by anything else, people aren't going to respect the strictures of an arbitrary society. They're not going to wake up one morning and say well, democracy is a good idea, lets give it a try. They may think that it sounds good, but they don't really know it, and they do know that if they keep their local chief happy, to whom they're bound by tradition or blood or whatever, they're more likely to get to the end of the day. They may prefer it otherwise, but they're pragmatic. And all our posturing about the wonders of democracy aren't going to mean squat against that unless we can make it something that they actually want to do -- something that they're willing to die for. Frankly, thats a hell of a lot to ask.

And what of the culture that says its normal for people to amass private armies? People who have those armies have to be reckoned with, and they'd be tough to eliminate. A really strong central force -- shall we call it a dictator? -- could do that, though. It could make it unwise to visibly oppose the desires of the central force, and make that attitude stick. Can Maliki do that? Well, I'm not a political scientist, either, but I really doubt it. He certainly can't have the military force to do it. Whether he has the political force is another question. He's got to be very, very good about making deals, cutting ties and making new ones as the situation warrants. I think that given his own druthers, he'd end up with a network of loose groups , vague regions of power -- kind of like the idea of the Mafia and its structure. Is that desirable? Probably not -- but it works. And part of that might well be that every so often people wake up in the morning and find out that the guy who used to be the local warlord isn't, anymore, because last night he got blown up.

Its an awful way to live -- but its a way to live.

Cross Words

I like doing crosswords. It gives me the chance to show off my vocabulary. Lately, though, the words that come to mind when I do the one I'm used to -- in the Washington Post -- aren't actually in the puzzle, and indeed aren't in any crossword puzzle I've ever seen. That's because WaPo (as the cognoscienti refer to it) has switched from the New York Times crossword to something called the Crossynergy Crossword, and I don't think these guys are using real words. Well, I suppose thats a bit harsh -- they're all real -- its just that they're not words I tend to hear all that often.

For example: Front Wheel Alignment (5 letters). Now, to a mechanic, this'd be obvious -- but I had to get four of the five letters -- and then run through the alphabet, trying each one for the missing one -- until I got it: TOEIN. Or this: Window Alternative (5 letters). I thought Door, Shade, Curtains...um, no. AISLE. Oh, yeah. Of course, they DO have some classics -- Star Trek Communications Officer (5 letters) - - and some erudite ones -- One Of Chaucers Pilgrims (12 letters) -- that last one balanced nicely by "____ Men -- (Who Let The Dogs Out Band)" -- which, as it turned out, is not BAJA, but BAHA. But overall -- man! Where are they getting these things from?

And why don't I know them?

Boor - E - toe...

Like many others, I've occasionally felt the yearning to have a decent burrito -- which is to say, one that isn't made by Taco Bell, Del Taco, or any of the other clones that infest the eastern and central parts of the United States. While there are places to get a good burrito, you have to take your chances, trying out a new place and seeing what shows up on your plate when you order.

Now, if our town had one of these, burrito angst would be history.

All fall...

I've always admired the collective work of architects and engineers. While much of what they do is pedestrian, it is, literally, integral to the functioning of our society. We expect that airplane wings will stay attached in turbulence, that automobiles won't blow up if hit, that ocean liners won't sink in high seas, that buildings won't fall down in a storm.

This article is about an engineer who found that his design for a massive New York skyscaper was faulty, to the point that in a strong hurricane -- one that might be expected once every seventeen years -- the building could experience what engineers call a 'failure' -- and what non-engineers call a catastrophe. It could, in fact, collapse.

The article is a bit technical, but fascinating nonetheless, and a practical demonstration of ethical and professional behavior.