Parallel Cats and Crazy Clothes Day

First, you gotta understand, the cats never sit this close to each other. So when we saw them doing this last night, we had to get a picture of it.
I'm not sure if they're just getting too old to care, or if they're working out their tolerance issues, but this was noteworthy enough to make a record of it. So if they ever have 'issues' again about being next to one another, I'm going to print out this picture and shove it in their faces and say, "Hey! What about this?"
Cats are just so weird.

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Today is Mis-matched Clothes Day at the Middle School, and apparently that includes Crazy Hair or something, so the girls are doing their best to fit in. Especially Mary. She's always been the more "fashion-conscious" of the two, so she actually planned out her wardrobe last night. Bright colors, mismatched socks & shoes ... and a tattoo.

We got the tattoo last night at the grocery store. Her brother gave her the odd quarters he'd got back from the can recycling, and she promptly took them over to the gumball/toy machines by the entrance and got a fairy tattoo. And when we got home, she put it on her shoulder so it would be ready to go for school today.

And she made sure that her hair was wet last night when she went to bed so it would be a rat's nest this morning.

Deb didn't have to keep her hair wet. Her hair is so long, if she doesn't brush it, it becomes a rat's nest anyway. As you can see.
(This is also her "I'm too tired to care" look.)

I hope it doesn't bother them that it's 22°F outside.

Permitted!

We're so happy to have another driver in the family now. Of course, he doesn't realize how much 'fun' it's going to be when we give him a list of errands to run. He's just thinking of the freedom to go where he wants to go, when he wants to go (and with whom he wants to go). Hey! It must be time for him to get a JOB!!

Joory Dooty At Last!!

Finally, after nearly thirty years of adulthood, I've received the coveted Joory Dooty Award for Good Citizenship! Yes, I got my summons in the mail. Or whatever you call it. And there is the possibility that I might actually get to sit on a jury and help decide an important case!

Or not.

Since I'm both a cynic and an engineer, this is the way I envision the proceedings.

"Mr. Meyer, what is your occupation?"

"I'm an engineer."

{sound of lawyers whispering to one another}

"Thank you, Mister Meyer. You are excused."

"May I ask why?"

"We don't want any logical thinkers in the jury. They're not impressionable enough."

Still, the idea of actually being able to take part in the Justice System, even if I don't get picked or accepted or approved, fills me with joy. It's like voting. There's no feeling in the world like coming out of the voting room with the little "I Voted" sticker attached to your forehead (or shirt, if you're boring) and a satisfied feeling in your heart that you have done your Civic Duty.

Oh, how I wish everyone all over the world could feel that feeling!

Publishing Books

Just read an interesting blogsite today concerning the world of book publishing.

{It's been a goal of mine to one day actually publish a book. Once I come up with something worth reading.}

The premise is very interesting. Paper is on its way to becoming a niche market, book-wise. The future is electronic readers. They say. And since there is not much overhead involved with publishing books electronically (once all your readers have purchased the electronic reading device and paid for all those batteries), it makes sense that the bulk of the profit from the sale of the book goes to the actual author.

Instead of a measly 15% of the wholesale price, imagine making 70%!

Hmmm ... let's see ... pull out my calculator here ... What does an average book cost these days, anyway? Hardbacks are in the $20 - $30 range, so let's say $25 to make it easy. That's ($25 * 0.17 = ) $4.25/book. Paperbacks are somewhere between $8 - $15, so let's even it down to $12. That's ($12 * 0.17 = ) $2.04/book. So to make a good living - somewhere in the neighborhood of $80k, perhaps - you'd need 10,000 hardback (a typical number for a first edition), which gives you $42,500, plus 20,000 paperback (20k * $2.04 = $40,800). Thirty thousand books. Per year. And that's assuming you're getting a percentage of the retail cost, not the wholesale production cost. If you're talking wholesale, you've gotta sell roughly twice as many, say sixty thousand.

That's a lot of books.

Naturally, there's a difference in price between the paper books and the electronic books, since there's no paper or binding or glue or actual 'printing' involved. Just an electronic file that gets downloaded to a device. At which point the reader gets to select the color, font, page formatting, and other parameters of the book. The author provides the text (and pictures, diagrams, tables, etc.).

Looking around at some of the eBooks that are available, it looks like the prices vary from $0.99 all the way up to $6.99. Quite a spread, percentage-wise. If we apply the 70% cut to those, we see that the same thirty thousand books nets us somewhere in the range of (30k * $0.99 = ) $30,000 to (30k * $6.99) = $270,000.

Now add in the extra bonus that selling eBooks is a lot easier than selling paper books, since they can be bought and paid for and downloaded all within the comfort of the reader's home, and it becomes obvious that it makes a lot of sense to write - and purchase - eBooks.

Except for needing to buy all those pesky batteries. Or staying near an outlet so there's always a handy power source.

Makes me wonder if there's an even better way of doing it.

Back in the good old days of the Internet, it was all going to be done with PCs. But people found it difficult to cradle their desktops in their laps while reading a good mystery story late at night. Then the laptops came out, and they were better, but it still wasn't as comfortable as a good old-fashioned paperback. Now with the Kindle (et al) readers, it remains to be seen.

I should drag a few of those old stories out of mothballs and see what happens.

Back to the Future

What can I say? It was on sale. $12.99 at Costco for the trilogy. With a bonus disk. And we hadn't seen it in a million years (give or take). So I bought it, even thought it wasn't on the grocery list.

It's amazing how much the mind remembers over the years ... and how much the mind forgets. There's quite a bit of swearing in these movies, enough to make it uncomfortable to listen at times. How come I don't remember that from when the movies came out? We all went to the theater to see them when they came out. Were we that jaded at the time? Had media become so full of bad language back in the 80's that it didn't even register?

The movies are still amusing, but my brain is quite different than it was in those heady days of yesteryear. Instead of focusing on the romance and the science fiction and the humor, my mind picks up on the inconsistencies, the logical fallacies, the things that just don't make sense. It's difficult to enjoy it the same way we did a quarter-century ago. The kids think it's funny. Sometimes I wish I could sneak into their brains and experience it the same way they do.

The same thing happens every night during our Bible study. My brain is reading the words in the scriptures and filtering them through nearly fifty years of information and analysis, whereas their brains are still seeing it somewhat new and fresh. Whereas my attention is captured by subtle nuance of phrasing and intention, they are hearing it -- as teenagers -- as though for the first time. Perhaps this is due to the relative scarcity of in-depth Biblical analysis undertaken at the teen level. One does tend to hear the same stories over and over again. And one must take care not to overwhelm minds which are being inundated with fresh information (school, Internet, friends) every day, every hour. So we take what we can get out of it, and try not to push too hard.

But sometimes I wish that I could erase it all from my mind and start over, experiencing it for the very first time, to get past the phrases which have embedded themselves in my brain from years of reading and studying, to see them fresh and new and unobserved. I try. As we go through the Bible with the children every night, I hear it read with different voices, different intonation, different emphasis. And I try to find specific details which jump out at me, which demand explanation, and ask the children for their own interpretations. And we discuss these things.

I don't try to answer all the questions. My main goal is to stimulate an interest, plant a seed, posit a mystery which must be solved. Were I to try and answer all the questions, there would be no need for them to go back and re-read it again on their own. The hope is that enough of a mystery remains that they will be prompted to do a little investigation on their own. And truly see that the Bible is a living, breathing, active document.

Dilbertonian Obfuscation and BizSpeak Bingo

I am a cynic and a skeptic through experience, and this last week's litany of corporate emails did not help to moderate my position. We received a little note from one of the uppity-ups the other day, and although obviously I can't quote you the entire thing, I can give you a fair idea of the gist of the presentation.

As I read the note, the first thing that popped into my head was a game we used to play back in the good old days at Boeing (early 90's) during department meetings when a guest speaker - an executive from Up On High - would drop in for a few words of encouragement, which generally sent office morale into a tailspin.

Here's a sample of the type of tedium which passes for Corporate Encouragement these days. I've tagged the BizSpeak phrases in red. Extra points if you can figure out what they mean!

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The Executive Team has completed our working session where we discussed and reviewed our collective Goals & Objectives (G&O's) for this year. Our chief acomplishment was aligning our division-level G&O's with the corporate G&O's to ensure a common framework of expectations and deliverables throughout the organization. So here are the G&O's for this year.

• Metrics
  
  • Exceed operational & financial targets with unyielding integrity and compliance.
  • Focus on Enterprise Risk Management.
  • Implement operating rhythms with all teams.
  • Focus the teams on communications and joint accountability in the matrix.
• Execution
• Drive the execution of product development, technology, new product innovation (NPI) and our service model.
• Focus on productivity and margins.
• Global Business Growth
• Accelerate and drive business growth, both organic and inorganic.
• Talent and Transformational Learning
• Deliver on talent acquisition plans.
• Implement a transformational learning and development agenda across the organization.
• Culture and Engagement
• Build a purpose-focused culture of engaged employees that rewards collaboration, competence and competitiveness.
• Encourage winning solutions.
• Focus on action planning and implementation of actions.
• Highlight and celebrate progress.
• Accentuate the benefits (health, environment, rewards).

The year ahead has a number of opportunities and challenges, so it is important that we leave our mark and secure our collective future.

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And here is my witless attempt at a translation, based on my vast years of experience.

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This year, we executives went offsite to a really nice hotel to talk about our goals for the year. We ate a lot of great food and spent lots of Company money to figure out how to make even MORE money so we could continue these fun exercises while the “rank and file” are trying to figure out if they still have a job.

We started by copying the corporate goals that our bosses handed down. Of course, that doesn't make any sense, but since our bonuses are based on affirming everything our bosses tell us, we ran with them. Here they are:

• Keeping Track of Where We Are
• The status charts are meaningless; just make sure that they show us ahead of budget and schedule.
• Don't do anything risky, like spending money on equipment, training, or better planning.
• Don't allow changes to the processes, even if it would reduce waste or increase efficiency. Maintain status quo.
• Schedule lots of meetings to make management look active and involved; it may interrupt the worker bees, but that way we can blame them for not making any progress.


• Actually Doing Something
• Find more development contracts for technology that doesn't exist yet. We can make lots of money up-front on promises. And afterward on repairing stuff we didn't get right the first time.
• Get stuff out the door whether it works or not, because our profit margins shrink if we spend too much time getting it right.


• Getting a Piece of the Global Pie
• Find partners in emerging economies who are willing to give us money based on a bunch of paper promises. These partners don't actually have to be companies that produce anything, but they must have lots of money.


• Staffing
• Get rid of the older staff because we have to pay them too much; hire new staff right out of college because they're cheap and desperate.
• Put a lot of training stuff on the website so the staff think they can keep themselves up-to-date and marketable.


• Morale
• Come up with lots of "fun" events and forums and activity groups to convince the employees that they are part of some global community.
• Write up a lot of propaganda emails and website news that makes it look like we're winning lots of contracts and delivering stuff on time.
• Have lots of parties and awards and certificates so the staff feels like they're actually accomplishing something worthwhile.
• Remind the staff how lucky they are to have any benefits at all in the current economic environment; make them grateful to even have a job.

If we play our cards right, the year ahead might result in some serious bonuses for those of us here at the top, but we’ve got to stick together. Remember our common purpose: to boldly make more money than anyone has a right to make in these economic times while pretending that we’re just like the rest of the ‘common’ folk, so they don’t suspect that we couldn’t care less what happens to them. We want to leave our mark and secure our future, collecting more money than ever before!

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Marching to Praetoria

Seriously bummed. It's the first of March, and I didn't get my payment in for the 30th High School Reunion bash (due 02/28), so it looks like we probably won't be going.

Still can't figure out why everyone wanted it at the end of April when all the kids are still in school. Would've been a royal pain in the tookus to pull the kids out of school and drive twelve hours down to Virginia just so I could hang out with a bunch of people I haven't seen for thirty years (although I've enjoyed hearing from them via Facebook in the last couple) and then turn around and drive back again so the kids wouldn't miss too much school.

But it sounded like the party was going to be a bit too much anyway. I'm not into the blitz-style of partying, where one dresses up nice and then goes to a fancy club or hall where people drink too much, laugh too loud, say all the wrong things at the wrong time (because their synapses are Firing Under the Influence) and have to scream at one another because the music is turned up way too loud, and, based on the comments I was reading, that seemed to be the expectation.

My kind of party is where ten or twelve of my best-remembered friends from High School get together at someone's house, eat a gourmet meal, then sit down and catch up on each other's lives, talk about the serious stuff, the life-goals, the joys and disappointments we've experienced thus far, reminisce about the things that brought us together in the first place. We sit up far too late into the evening (or early morning), but when we leave, we all have clear heads and renewed relationships because we didn't waste time trying to entertain each other with gyrations on the dance floor and disco balls and bad 80s music and sound bites about how successful we have become.

And if I'm going to trouble myself to travel all the way to the East Coast, it won't be to spend a single day hanging out with old high school friends, even though I love them dearly; it will also be to spend many days showing my family the people and places which were a part of my younger life - not that my life is important, but the people and places in my life were important in and of themselves. I want them to see Boston and New York City and Long Island and Montauk Point and Port Jefferson; I want them to see Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian and the Air & Space Museum and Baltimore and Richmond and Petersburg and The Crater and Appomattox Courthouse and Williamsburg and Virginia Beach and Kitty Hawk and Nag's Head and Hatteras. And I want to take them to Huntsville where their goofy cousins live, and drop in on the Space museum there. And I want to take them down to Florida to see the Cape and Disney (if we can ever afford it) and the Atlantic and Gulf shores.

And at the end of the tour, I want them to be able to say that they've seen the East Coast, that they have dipped their toes into the eastern waters and met the people with their strange accents and hospitable ways, that they have sampled the foods from north to south, that they have seen the lights of the cities and the night skies of the country lanes, that they have seen the history and the beauty of this country into which they were blessed enough to be born; and then I shall rest easy because yet another portion of their education has been completed.

An introduction.

It's all I can do at this point, just to introduce them to little things here and there. In some ways, it is impossible to teach these things. We don't have near the capacity to learn from other people's experiences as we have the ability to learn from our own. And before they leave my house and go off into the great unknown which is their future, I'd like to give them an opportunity to have their own experience; as much of a taste, an introduction, into the world as I can, even if it consists of no more than a few hours wandering through well-traveled roads, through dusty corridors of museums, along the lanes and sidewalks of cities whose name and fame precede them, and through the memories of people with whom they come in contact.

That is my Grand Scheme. It's importance grows every day as I look at my children and realize anew that they are getting older by the minute, closer and closer to the day when they finally leave my house, when they will move beyond my direct sphere of influence, when the world and their friends and their new experiences will be a larger factor in their continuing education than I. By that time, I hope to have given them as much knowledge and wisdom and experience and guidance as will keep them on the right path, contented with their circumstance and inspired to be their best, never looking back to what might have been, but always looking forward to what ought to be.

Meanwhile, I'm still bummed that we won't be going to the reunion. I was so looking forward to seeing who still has their hair.