Mr T’s rants and ravings

Like a lot of people I am a touch typist. OK not a great one and I have trouble with special characters but still I get  but most of the time. This means a couple of things. One is that I can take notes while watching the people or person who is talking. That seems more polite than looking at the keyboard. And it means that I can type in the dark when I can’t see the keyboard if I want to. (Which I am doing now BTW)  It’s a pretty useful skill to have. And of course it means that I type faster (though not real fast) then I would if I had to look for the keys all the time.

I went to secretarial school to learn to type when I was in middle school. Yes a special school for mostly women to learn office skills that was mostly typing and shorthand. I never learned the shorthand but the typing I learned and that has served me well for years and years. It was weird being a middle school boy in a place like that. I pretty muck just worked because I was not about to talk to all those older women some of whom much have been at least 20!

Now a days people learn to text by touch. That’s just not going to happen for me and I don’t think anyone teachers that. People just learn it. I’m not sure how many people who IM can touch type though. I tend to think that some of the reason for text and IM shorthand is that people just don’t type fast enough. I know that a lot of the conversations I have are with people who use code and still do not type as much real information as I do. That can cause misunderstandings at time.

Does anyone know if middle schools teach typing these days? Or younger? High schools seem to pretty much have dropped it. Somewhere along the line I think that typing should be something people learn though. Maybe not to me a super fast touch typist but at least good enough to write a good essay and keep up with a text based conversation. What do you think?

I believe that everything has a story. Some stories are trivial and some are not. I suspect that one can’t tell if the story is big or small by the item though. Money is an example.

Yesterday I found a five dollar bill on the ground. It was wet and dirty but there is no way of telling how long it has been on the ground or how it got there. It may be that someone lost it and never knew it was missing. Perhaps they had plenty of money and losing was lost in the noise as it were. But on the other hand perhaps to the person who lost it losing it mattered a good deal. Could it have meant the difference between a good meal and no meal at all? Could it have meant that they ran out of gas on the way home? There are all sorts of ways where losing $5 could be a big deal to someone.

I also found a dime yesterday. Now a dime is a whole lot less valuable than a five spot so it probably didn’t change anyone’s life. But I’ll bet if one really thought about it one could make up a good story about it.

So I found $5.10 yesterday. The dime is going into my change fund but I’m not sure about the five. Spend it - on something fun or on regular expenses? Or put save it for something? Tough questions. What do you do with found money?

So this is a risky post. I’m going to talk about naked people. Sort of. The big news today was that Lindsay Lohan has taken part in a photo shoot to re-create the last photo shoot that Marilyn Monroe did. The pictures are in New York magazine. Apparently the pictures are so popular that the magazine’s web site crashed. The Today show showed some of the pictures with a big read "ribbon" in strategic places.

This brings up item number one. Apparently you can show as much of a woman’s breasts as you want as long as the nipples don’t show. This is an advance from the past. The old "I Dream of Jeanie" show was not allowed to show belly buttons. The original Star Trek was not only not allowed to show nipples but could not show the underside of a breast. I had no idea the underside was so much more titillating than the top side. Sigh.

Recently I watched a few minutes of a show on Discovery Channel or Travel Channel (I wasn’t paying much attention) that was chronicling life in an African village. The women wore nothing but jewelry above the waist. The nipples were magically airbrushed into invisibility. I guess if you can’t see them they aren’t there. And if they aren’t there no one will get all excited. I mean really, do they think no one knows what they look like?

Coming back to Ms. Lohan’s photo shoot. I’ve seen some of the images from Marilyn Monroe’s shoot. They have been on display in an fancy art gallery near where my father lives. They’ve been put on display in the windows with no Today style red ribbon. Apparently no one complains. Now I think the images are more artsy than erotic though I’m not sure I’d be comfortable having them on display in my house. They are not quite our style. I suspect that Ms. Lohan’s images are the same. But somehow I doubt that the people whose traffic crashed the web site were looking for art.

Outside the US attitudes about showing the human body are different. Bare breasts, and other body parts, are more common and people tend not to get all worked up about it. I was on a beach, quite unexpectedly I assure you, where a number of young women were topless. Honestly you can get used to it pretty quickly and it need not get one all hot and bothered. I asked a BG student once about a visit a group of them made to a nude beach oversees on a field trip and his comment was that "not everyone looks good naked." No kidding!

But of course in the US we make such a big thing of it that when people do see it they get all bothered because, in part I think, they think they are supposed to. Is this helpful? I’m not so sure it is.

Now I am not advocating a sudden and dramatic change nor am I suggesting that we need more nudity in the world. It just seems that f the way we treat the nude form contributes to the objectification of women. We let or perhaps encourage people to look everywhere but at the face. It becomes all about how a woman looks and not who she is. I think I need do little more than suggest one watch a minute or two of "Deal or No Deal." Does anyone really believe that show would be as popular without "hot women" in short dresses with lots of cleavage holding the suitcases? I don’t think so. Could you recognize any of them by their faces? Somehow I doubt it.

The photographer who took these pictures is an artist to be sure. But it seems like everyone else involved from Ms. Lohan to the magazine are just using her body to make money. And that seems to me a shame.

There are times when I just want to get away from it all. I get tired of the people, the work, the phone, the Internet, the TV and pretty much all the distractions of daily life. I read an article today about a guy who built a cottage in his back yard to get away a little. I think I like that idea. Of course people can find you a little too easily there so maybe some times you have to go further away.

I like to go to my Dad’s house when he isn’t there. Now don’t get me wrong I love visiting my Dad. In fact I’ll be visiting him in about a week and a half for a couple of days. But he has a house in a summer resort area that he’s not always at in the winter. To me going there then is just relaxing. Now I could not do it often or for long. Mrs. T went away for a couple of days tonight and I miss her already. But sometimes and for short times it is a good recharge.

Probably the ideal world would be to get away from everyone but my wife with us each going our own ways during the day. I’m sure not ready to live completely alone for a long time. Although to be honest, if not for my wife, I think I could get used to it.

There is an expression in German that translates to “work makes life sweet.” There is a corollary thought that translates to “but too much is too much.” I’m starting to feel that later expression.

Eleven days ago I left home for a business trip to Seattle. I’m still there and have two more days before I get home. And it is all starting to catch up with me. In that time I have had exactly one day off - last Saturday. Unfortunately (in some ways) I spent that day having a lot of fun. The list of things we did is embarrassingly long and started with breakfast and ended with a return to my hotel well after 1AM. Mentally relaxing but not physically.

People who don’t travel on business often don’t understand how much work it is. One generally starts with meeting people for breakfast and ends it with a long dinner also with a lot of work components. In between are meetings broken up only by more meetings. Think about having a school day that runs 14 hours long and continuing even while you are eating.

I was a little late for breakfast this morning - I just could not get up. Right now between sessions (this is a training week) I am trying to get some of my regular day job work done. There is a big party tonight (yes we do have some fun) but I’m not sure I’ll be going. If I do go I will be leaving early. The younger people and the people who only arrived this week may have energy left but I’m about spent. I am seriously looking forward to sleeping on the plane ride home on Saturday.

In the long run it is worth it of course. I am learning a lot of good things and meeting a lot of interesting people. There are 6000 people from around the world at this event and I have made some good contacts and added friends to my Facebook account. Last week was a smaller group of people and there I met new people but also reconnected with people I know from previous meetings. There are people from South America and South Africa, Japan, China, England and all over eastern and western Europe. It’s pretty cool actually.

Tomorrow I will hear Bill Gates talk to the conference and that should be interesting. But you know, part of me would like to go home tonight.

Many years ago when I was in high school is was in a classroom for the first time. I don’t remember if I was every in this room again and I clearly did not sit at the same desk again. I don’t even remember why I was there. What I have never forgotten (and it is over 35 years later) is the graffiti written on the top of the desk.

I wish I was what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.

Confusing at first but profound as one thinks about it. Or so I think anyway. I have no idea what prompted a high school student to write it. How many things can one wish for and reach at that young an age and regret already. But none the less it is a sentiment I have pondered over the years.

When I look at possible changes in who I am or at least what I do for a career or for other life changes I think long and hard about what it means to change. Will I later regret making a move? That is a question that has the potential to create paralyzing uncertainty and a certain stagnation if taken to extreme of course. One does have to take risks at times and often those risks are based on less than complete information.

So far I have never had to express the wish to be what I once was. I have moved forward to better things and a happier life. Even these days when I think about becoming a teacher again (what I was when I wanted to be what I am now) it is not because I don’t want to be what I am now. Rather it is because I see different roles for different parts of my life. I want to be what I am now more than I want to be what I was then. At least for right now. Are there other things I might like to be? Yes I think so but they are new things, things I need to work towards, and not a retreat to something I once was.

I think a little "want" to drive one forward is a good thing. I think it is also ok to want to move back to something, or to be someone, one was before. Not everything works out the way we expect or the way we hope. Second chances are good things and not to be feared.

I hate noise. Of course part of the definition of noise is "unwanted." It’s like weeds. Weeds are plants that are growing where they are not wanted. I hate all sorts of extra sounds but the ones from fans, pumps and similar devices are among the worst to my ear. Unfortunately they are integral parts of such devices as air conditioners, dehumidifiers, humidifiers, washing machines and exhaust fans. Things that it is hard to do without.

In my dream house the living space would be isolated from those devices as much as possible. I do not currently live in such a dream house. Where I living by myself I would put up with very dry air in the winter, very hot air in the summer, and lots of kitchen smells year round. But  I don’t. Oh well.

I do try to avoid these sounds as much as possible. The washer and dryer are in the basement. I use the time delay on the dish washer to start it during the night when I am asleep or when I am out of the house. I’ll run the air conditioner high when I am not in the room so I can turn it down when I am in it. I have taken to wearing my Bose sound reducing headphones when using the Vacuum and may use it at other times as life goes on. I seem to be getting more sensitive to noise rather than less as I get older. That seems strange in some ways because as we age the range of frequency we can hear gets smaller.

BTW This site http://www.freemosquitoringtone.org/ lets you hear sound at different frequencies. Well it lets you play them. You can only hear all of them if you are below a given age. I can’t hear most of them. Why can’t more devices make noise in ranges I can’t hear? Now wouldn’t that be cool?

I dislike loud sounds as well. My hearing works pretty well and I’d like to keep it that way. Why do so many people turn the volume way up? It seems to me that distortion sets in way too easily at high volume.

All I want is a nice quiet world. Sigh.

I received email today at both my work and home email from the same person. I have no idea where he is from (or for sure that it is a he) but they claimed to be a university student taking a VB course. They need help with their projects that are due next Thursday. They appear not to have started at all. In fact they probably do not know how to start.

They ask if I know someone who can help them.  If that is all they are looking for why send the whole problem descriptions? I get these all the time. If I let them they would get me to do the whole project. In fact doing the whole project would be a lot easier and take less time than trying to actually help. I did the first project they sent me in under 3 minutes - design, write, and test. That’s less time then I spent writing this blog post. I imagine if they ask enough people one of them will send them a solution.

The next step, if history is any guide, is that they will ask for an explanation of how/why it works so they can hand that in as well. Am I being cynical? Perhaps but I’ve seen this before.

Some people believe that a diploma somehow magically makes them smart and knowledgeable. They don’t want to do the work of learning things. Just give them the grade so they can get the job they want. I actually had a student (at a so-called college) ask me to just give him a B because that is what he needed to get his course paid for and to graduate the program. He told me he didn’t have time to do the work but I should still give him the grade. Bah! That wasn’t going to happen.

Now I don’t mind helping people learn. In fact helping and teaching are great and wonderful things for me. If someone comes to me with code and needs help understanding why they are seeing a syntax error or why the answer is coming out wrong I’ll happy to help. I will look it over and explain things until they "get it." Debugging code is fun and I am always (well almost always) willing to give it a shot. But I refuse to do it all and let someone pretend them know something they don’t,

OK that is out of my system. Thanks for listening. Or Ignoring me. What ever.

One of the things I got for Christmas was Alan Greenspan’s book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. I started reading it a few nights ago. I’m reading it in small chunks not because it is dry and dull but because there is so much good/interesting stuff in it. I’m mulling it over as I read it.

There are more or less two main things about this book. One is economic theory. The other is Greenspan’s life and his interactions with people and events in history. For example he has worked with Presidents from Nixon to Bush junior. He has opinions on all of them and they make for interesting reading.

He’s also not the complete nerd you might expect. He is an accomplished mission and performed professionally for several years. Not what you expect in an economist.

I’m finding the economics interesting as well. It has been a long time since I studied macro economics (about 35 years) and things have changed in the economy and in the world since then. So I have to think a bit about what he writes in that area. I’m only part way through (the USSR just started breaking up) but I expect that I will learn a lot by the time I am finished. At the same time I expect that I am going to want to do some additional reading in economics to fill in the extensive holes in my knowledge.

I love getting books that make me think!

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. People never keep them anyway and I’m not that different from most people. I do set goals but they are not tied to the fact that there is a year change on the calendar.

January is typically the start of my annual self-evaluation phase though. For the last 14 years or so I have spent January and February evaluating my job and trying to decide if it is time to actively look for a new one, stay where I am at or just be open in case a new one pops up. This last year I decided to do the same thing during the summer as well. Twice a year seems like enough times to do serious soul searching, thinking and praying about ones career.

I start with an open mind. It helps that I start after a short vacation (I’ve been on vacation since the Friday before Christmas) so my mind is cleared of stress (well work related stress) and related activities. So I have no idea what I’ll decide. Though honestly I am far from unhappy with my present job or company.

I am trying to lose weight but that has been ongoing. I put on some weight over the summer and early fall. It has been tough losing it but it has to be done (doctor’s orders). Obviously I’m still working on that but you can’t call that a New Year’s resolution. As part of that I am trying to exercise more and get into better physical shape beyond just being thinner.

My third goal these days is to some up with more goals. I just don’t feel like I have enough on my plate to really make my life interesting. We’ll see how it goes.