Baseball in Vienna

Last night I purchased the Billy Joel Complete Hits Collection, and loaded it onto my iPod. I did this for a few reasons. First, I'm a huge Billy Joel fan. He's quite possibly my favorite artist in the genre. Second, I used to own a 2-CD set of his and I (along with my good friend BJW) loved to listen to it, but I've sense lost it, and I was bitter. So, I bought this big collection of songs. I listened to most of the first CD last night while dinking around my apartment. It was very much like the 2-CD set I once owned. I meandered though the second and third CDs while at work today. More of the same (which is a good thing.)

Tonight, I went for a walk. I wasn't particularly excited about going on the walk. It was a little cloudy and rain was a possibility, so I put it off until around 7:00. At this time, I got bored enough that I put on my slightly shrunk U. Of I. sweatshirt, blue Smart Wools and sandals, and I headed out, grabbing my iPod of course.

So I'm walking along, listening to the 4th CD, and I discovered that the whole CD was done in a small, personal, non-concert style. It reminded me of the VH1 Story Tellers shows that I used to get sucked into when I still had cable. About halfway though my walk, I came to the part where Billy Joel is asked, "Why Vienna?" Despite my appreciation for Billy Joel's music, I had never heard the song Vienna, so I didn't fully understand the question. Billy went on to discuss how, historically, Vienna was a place of cross-roads; a place of continuance. He learned this when he went to visit his father, who lived in Vienna, and noticed an old woman, probably 85-90 years, who was sweeping the street. He asked his father why she was doing this, and his father lightly lectured him on how this woman was happy, and she was serving a purpose. In most countries outside of the United States, elders are respected. They're not put into retirement homes, out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but rather treasured as a resource. They are useful.

After explaining all of this, he gets to his song, which is about going too fast through life, trying to squeeze everything out of it before getting old and useless. The moral of the story is "Vienna waits for you." Slow down, enjoy life, and come to realize that you will still be useful and respected in old age.

As this song was playing, I walked by a father, playing a game of big-red-plastic-bat baseball with his children and some of the neighbor kids in front of his house. None of the children could have been much more than 10 years old. One of the younger kids mis-threw the ball and it landed near me. I picked it up, threw it back to the father, and noticed how happy he seemed. They were all happy. The kids were laughing, the father was smiling, and I found myself smiling as well. It seemed to coincide with the music perfectly, and with life in general.

"Slow down, you crazy child. You're so ambitious for a juvenile, but if you're so smart, tell me why are you so afraid." ... "When will you realize Vienna waits for you?"


I continued walking. Actually, I extended my normal route to over twice its length. It was one of those joyful and surreal moments in a persons life, and I was happy.

Thoreau goes to New Lenox

I spent last weekend in New Lenox, IL, with a bunch of friends. What a blast! I've got some random pics up in the gallery, but they're not all that good. Nothing wrong with the people in the pics, but more-so my complete lack of graphic ability (funny considering where I work, really.)

Living alone for almost a year changes a person. Sometimes, while sitting in my uncomfortable round chair ("round" because I can't spell pa..pa..zon..., er.., whatever), I think of myself as Henry David Thoreau. Sure, I don't have a little shack in the woods like Thoreau did, but if I adjust the lighting and don't open the windows, my apartment starts to smell like an outhouse. This is, for my purposes, close enough to a wooden shack to make it real. I'm all about keeping it real. Next step, start writing horrible books about walking, or rather, in my parallel life, keyboarding.

Things That Make Your Day

So I'm reading through automated logs this morning, and I come across an email address that cracked me up....

nacho@ihispanic.com

It's the little things... ;-)

Don't Bite The Hand That Feeds

So, I'm going to be out of the city/state for the weekend, so rather than cook something at home and have nasty leftovers when I get back, I decided to make a quick run to my local Arby's. Now, I don't like to frequent such restaurants any more than possible, but I've been to them enough to know that I shouldn't expect much. Yet, I find myself asking for more...

So I drive up to the order wall thingy. Of course, I was hungry, so I was drawn to the big sign on the top of the order wall thingy. The sign read "Double Cheddar Combo, $6.39", or roughly the same. I was so excited about the hot flowing cheese in the picture that I barely even noticed the price. Anyway, I decided I could use two large cheese smothered piles of roast beef, along with some fries and a drink, so I went ahead with the process of ordering sed meal. In a monotone voice, the man on the other end replied, "We don't have the Double Cheddar Combo."

Now, half of me thought that I should just order something else. Arby's has lots of tasty treats. I'm sure I could find something to suit my needs. But no, my little daemon sat heavily on my shoulder, so I opted to argue. I believe my exact comment was "Then what does is this big sign on top of the order wall thingy that says "Double Cheddar Combo, $6.39" all about?" Yeah, that's right... Fuck the system! Viva la resistance! Oh yeah, I'm a bad ass. ... The man replies back with the same thing again, so I chose to continue in our battle of wits...

[ 10 minutes pass ]

I'm driving away, feeling confident that I've won the battle. I got my "Double Cheddar Combo". Oh sure, it I had to order every part of it individually and pay almost an extra $1.30 to make it happen, but I won! I proved that it could be done. I overcame the evils of corporate America that is Arby's.

And then something hit me... I had just argued, and won, over the entity that prepared the food that I was about to eat. Sure, I got what I wanted, but did I get a little something extra? Maybe a little extra flavor that I wasn't expecting? This bothered me considerably for the next 2-3 minutes while driving home. Did I pay $1.30 extra for a reason? Who really won? How does one quickly and thoroughly sift through a cup of cheese sauce for foreign objects? More importantly, what about foreign liquids?

Yeah, it bothered me until I drove past a convertible with some hot chick sitting in it, at which point I totally forgot about the entire ordeal. Good thing too, because I was almost home. I ate my well-earned food and was happy. However, if this is my last post on this blog for a long time, send a coroner to my apartment, and a legal team to Arby's.

One Good Book

Very recently, I've been reading the book "Winning", by Jack Welch. (Actually, I've been listening to it, mostly because I'm a super-geek and I love my iPod.)



Anyway, I'm not normally big into self-help or mentoring books, but this guy was the all-star of General Electric for years, so I think he might have an idea about what's going on.

So far, he's covered three general concepts:

• The top HR official should have at least as much power and respect in an organization as the CFO.
• Employees should be broken into the top 20%, the middle 70%, and the bottom 10%. Resources, rewards, and terminations should be dealt with according to this model.
• Candor is the "biggest dirty little secret" in any and all businesses, across all demographics.

The first concept is certainly shocking, but after listening to what Mr. Welch has been able to do by empowering HR within GE, I'm sold. It's a completely different way of thinking about HR, but it makes perfect sense.

The second concept makes perfect sense. Give rewards and resources to the company stars, and fire those that are going nowhere. The middle 70% is more difficult to deal with, but the general idea it to treat those that show star "potential" as stars, and those that don't, as the converse. This feeds quite well into the model of empowering HR.

The third, and in my mind most powerful concept, is that without candor, great things can not be achieved. I won't do any justice to his point by trying to summarize it here, but needless to say, it's a brilliant solution to a staggeringly large number of workplace issues. It's something that I need to be absolutely set on achieving in my work life, and I need to demand it from my co-workers as well.

He also went on to talk about how difficult it is to hire a good worker, especially good leaders, as well as how there is no good way to fire a person. However, having an empowered and capable HR department and detailed work review process will make the reasons for firing an employee known long before the final day comes.

So far, I think this book should be a must-read for anyone that works in a medium to large corporate environment, especially for leaders and managers. For everyone else, I would most certainly still recommend it. I'll try to keep updates coming and I complete more of the book...

"Dilbert", "Office Space", "The Office", and "Chris's Life!"

Three illustrations of my life:

• Dilbert
• Office Space
• The Office

Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but I can honestly, in any given day, think of at least three instances of how my life parallel's one of these. I don't know if it's overly depressing or way too funny, but it always makes me laugh (in that "I'm going craaaaazy" kind of way.)

I'll depart with a quote:

Peter Gibbons: You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Porter: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

"You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care." Quality!

Don't Teach Me How To Think

So, I was reading the following short story tonight...

Angels on a Pin A Modern Parable
by Alexander Callandra
Saturday Review, Dec 21, 1968.

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer."

The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his answer which read:

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = ½at², calculate the height of the building.

At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.

In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I asked. "And the others?"

"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method."

"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference of the two values of `g' the height of the building can be calculated."

Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point I asked the student if he really did know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America.

Okay, so the moral of the story is obvious, but it really hit home for me. I can't even begin to count the number of times I seriously considered (or went through with) answering test questions in this way just to prove that I don't have to conform to a poorly written question or an expected answer. I'm not going to lie and say that I got full credit every time I did this, but quite often the argument itself was worth it, especially if the professor was reasonable and willing to admit defeat (when called for.)

I've formed a few ideas around this, which may at first seem to be conflicting:

• Educational institutions should not attempt to teach anyone how to think
• Educational institutions should teach everyone how to learn

Now, it will be argued that teaching someone how to learn and how to think are one and the same, but I don't think this is a fair assessment at all. They're not equivalent ("apples to oranges"), and even if they were, they're certainly not correlated. I know several people that are much greater thinkers than I am, but possess much less learning ability, as well as the converse. I personally don't believe it's possible to teach someone how to think, at least not on such a large scale as an overall education. I have nothing concrete to this point, but the complexity of even understanding how another person thinks makes teaching them a new way of thinking quite daunting. Just ask any husband and wife that have been married for any considerable time.

Teaching someone how to learn is not a cake walk either, but I believe it can be done, if as nothing more than a guiding sense. I'm not talking about "study skills", "reading habits", or "note-taking shortcuts." I'm talking about the general philosophy of learning. I'm by no means an expert on learning, but I've done a little of it in my lifetime, and I expect I'll do a little more before I'm done.

So, how does one go about teaching someone how to learn. Well, if I were the professor, I'd offer this little gem of wisdom:

"No one is going to teach you anything, so you must become able and willing to learn anything."

Yes... I'd teach them that they can't be taught, but they most certainly can learn. Think about this until it makes sense. When it does, you'll find learning things becomes much easier.