Hypocrisy Toward The Heart of the Songwriter

Psalm 96:1, 98:1, 149:1, and Isaiah 42:10 all say to sing to the Lord a new song. Someone has to write these new songs. I am one of those people.

Recently in church, the sermon covered the story of the widow's mite. This story tells of richer people making a show of the money they were giving, but this woman making little of her contribution. While this is often used to illustrate that you should give no matter how bad it gets, the core of the usage this time had to do with where your heart is when you do what you do for God, and that you can do the right things for the wrong reasons.

This got me to thinking about volunteering at the church. Churches are usually pretty vocal about needing help since they thrive on their congregation stepping up to give of their time for teaching and literally everything else that goes on. They cry out for help and proclaim that you have a talent in something and they can it. Those who volunteer for some things are applauded for their willingness to sacrifice for the Lord and there is rarely, if ever, any question as to their motives or heart in the matter.

Unless you're a songwriter.

We have a campaign going for Feed My Starving Children, and someone was on stage a few weeks back who felt like she was called to help this campaign and be a big part of it. No small deal was made of this desire. However, if this person had said, "The Lord has called me to write music for his people," the vetting and doubt would still be going on. I know this because I write music. It has been implied not very subtlely that my heart is not in the right place by more than one person.

So a person can be revered because they feel called in one area, but completely shut down if called in another? If I said I'm up for teaching the youngsters, I'd be ushered in without question. Heck, even as a stage musician, there was very little vetting when it came to playing the existing music. Someone has to play it, right?

Let's talk about a calling for just a moment. How does one know they are called to do a certain thing? I've struggled with this for a long time because I've been met with so much resistance in what I do. Being a writer of anything is very hard, disheartening work because unless you are "known," no one believes in you. Period. The way I see a calling of any kind is that it is something that no matter how hard you try to leave it behind, it continues to come back. No matter how much you want to do something else, you keep circling back around to that one thing. No matter how much something has hurt you, beat you down, or how much other people have given you so much crap over what you've done, you can't ever escape it. Your heart is continually drawn right back to that thing to try it again.

I've been so done so many times, and yet, I keep writing music. I've wanted to leave every bit of it behind so many times, but I can't. I can't stop writing it. I can't stop playing. I have to be a part of it. No matter how hard I try to escape or how harsh the comments are or how much pain I've experienced as a resulting of trying over and over, I continue to return because only within it do I actually find peace.

I've most recently taken to writing songs with a friend of mine under the moniker of Kingdom Song. We have a couple dozen posted on YouTube, not for the glory of ourselves, but because in order for songs to be heard, someone has to play them. No one else will, so we'll sing the new songs to the Lord ourselves so that others can hear, share, and maybe even use them. Will they fit everyone? Nope. But some might.

Is my heart in the right place? I want to think so, and since I'm so conscientious of it, it probably is. The problem with being in this sort of capacity is it can very easily translate into praise for self instead of praise for God. It's easy to point to a songwriter belting out one of their own songs and say that he just wants attention. And yet, no one accuses a preacher, who writes a new sermon every week, of performing for himself. How is this different? A person stands before a congregation and gives a speech about Godly things that he wrote himself. Why accuse a songwriter of being self-centered when there is actual, scriptural reference for singing to the Lord a new song?

A songwriter can actually add quite a bit to a church if they would open their minds to the possibilities. True, it takes more talent from a worship band to play something where the arrangement has to be created, but as long as you don't do an entire set of new music, you find the time. "Sing to the Lord a new song" is in scripture four times. We are to worship the Lord, but he not only wants to hear us, he has given us talents to make something new, and he wants to hear that too. Something there that many times means something.

So don't question the heart of the songwriter. Like so many other things, there are those out for themselves, but just because it is something creative doesn't mean their heart isn't in it for the right reasons. "But you just did a whole blog post complaining about it," you may have just said. This blog post was because I was hurt by those who questioned my motives in what I am compelled to do. This post is a cry to those who turn a deaf ear to not just me, but everyone out there who wants to sing the to Lord a new song whether they want to hear it or not. This post is a reminder that just because something is public, that doesn't mean the heart of its creator isn't with the heart of THE creator.

"Sing to the Lord a new song." The Bible says it. I believe it. And if you look around, you'll find someone who can write it.

Broken Arrow Split Would Dissolve Pride Marching Band

A plan was presented to us in Broken Arrow in March 2017 to deal with the current population growth in the school system by using both the current high school campus and the freshman academy campus as full 9-12 high schools. It was a plan so overwrought with problems and unanswered questions that the district indicated that they were going to slow down, form committees, and answer questions before deciding on any proposal. Our hope is that the proposal died that day and something new will come up. We're not 100% certain of this, and as such, I wish to post about the scariest aspect of the plan: the dissolution of the biggest national and international celebrity in Broken Arrow, the Pride of Broken Arrow marching band.

I know it seems odd that a marching band would be a celebrity, and like a prophet in his hometown, Broken Arrow doesn't give it much thought, but outside of our town, it's renowned. The majority of the town has no idea what they have. When it comes to its loss, the military would refer to it as "collateral damage." Because of Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activity Association rules, the city cannot have a single marching band represent separate high schools, and the directors basically confirmed that if such a plan passed, the Pride of Broken Arrow will be no more.

The reason for this sudden end to the nationally recognized ensemble is that with the dilution of the talent across the city, and the fact that the only way for a school to get an annual sweepstakes award is for that school to excel in both marching and concert band, each school will need to require that every student enrolled in band participate in marching band at each school. Since the marching band will have to move from optional extracurricular back to required, it is felt that asking students to pay the fees currently associated with Pride to be unreasonable, and lower fees mean the big national trips will have to end. Beyond that, the Pride is a very expensive endeavor. We'd need more instruments, drill planning, musical arrangement, color guard instructors, and choreography. A lot goes into a band show. That's twice as much cash that no one has at the moment.

Before delving further into the Pride's importance, I want to deal with this plan a little bit. It has been a couple months since the original plan, and a lot has been spoken of and passed around since then about this and that, so I definitely want to address some of the things I never thought of before along with things that other people have said in favor of the plan.

To most people, the school marching band is not a big deal. In fact, Broken Arrow takes its Pride for granted. To people who were a part of it, it's family. I saw this dissolution as soon as I read the configuration proposal, and I said something. In the beginning of all of this, I was criticized for putting the band ahead of academic success and progress. They said that the town has enough talent to make a great marching band, but the directors indicated that whatever that is won't be the Pride because their mentality is that it should be an opportunity for all students equally and a two school system can't promise that. So someone telling me there will be another band as good is like telling a grieving parent that they can have more children.

This means that a split that has as parts of its intent to provide more opportunities will take away the opportunity that hundreds of band students look forward to every year. Is that a sacrifice we want to make? Is it one we have to make? Beyond that, a large campus offers infinitely more opportunities than a smaller one because more students mean more ideas which translate into more niche areas. So which opportunities have floated to the surface that people really want? Sports. People want their kid to play on a sports team and there are only limited numbers of people who can. Welcome to life. I heard the NFL just did their draft. Thousands desired to have a spot and only a couple hundred were selected. So many people want to play though. Should we split the NFL? If you ask a band student who missed out on All-State because there are limited spots, they'll tell you to get good. Practice your butt off and go for again next year. It's the way life works. Deal with it now.

Some point to school size, but size is a relative thing and big or small is a matter of opinion and perspective. Broken Arrow doesn't have the largest high school in the nation or even our region. Two of our nearest neighbors and competitors are Union and Jenks, both of whom have 10-12 graders in their high school. BA has 3500. Union does too. Jenks was at 3300. This doesn't mean we're big. It means we're comparable.

"But students feel isolated or invisible in a school this size." Students have to make themselves visible. They have to want to do something. They have to step out and decide to do something. No teacher can force a student to get involved, but there is something at that high school for literally everyone if they want to find it. I am a major introvert and I found more than one thing to do while I was there and the population was pushing 2,000 with just juniors and seniors.

"But you don't know everyone's names because we're so big. Don't even know everyone is every class." You know what? I knew the names of the people around me in my classes, not everyone. And this is another example of life. I work in an office with about 200 people. I don't know everyone's name. I know the ones around me and that's about it.

"But the gym is not big enough for pep rallies and other gatherings." Well, the Gym (formerly known as building G) wasn't built for the current population, but there are other ways to manage large populations for things like this. We have the technology to stream it for example to the student union and other places. Some students actually don't care and don't want to go. Why make them?

"What about overcrowding at that high school?" Perspective. My wife and I both attended BAHS and my oldest is there now. We knew how big it was, but it never felt that way from the inside. We had our place. How about putting 9th graders with seniors? My middle child is in 9th grade and while she wouldn't be bothered, she prefers being with her own age group and likes the freshman academy for that reason. Also for that reason, a transition to a 10th-grade academy followed by yet another to the senior high doesn't bother her at all. Maybe we should have asked the kids what they think instead of adults who can't relate and only think we know best.

"But the high school is old and needs work." So is the freshman academy. The former SIHS is actually older than the high school. Both campuses are aging, and the district is working on them. It takes time. Some have given knocked my comment about the high school being a Rolls Royce and point to its many issues. My original thought process in that analogy was noting that comparing the Freshman Academy to the High School was like comparing a three-door hatchback to a Rolls Royce. I was simply saying that the high school was a bigger, better campus and putting high schoolers at the freshman academy would be cheating them out of opportunities.

Then when the frustration really kicks in, people say it should be about academics. You can't let the Pride be more important that academics. Let's talk about academics. First, you can get academics anywhere. People homeschool. There are a wealth of private schools in the area. But you didn't homeschool or put you kids in one of those other places. No, you have them at our high school. Why? Can't afford the other options is a popular choice, but a reason we wanted our kids to be in this school was for the opportunities it afforded. To be very specific, we wanted them to have the chance to be in the Pride. We didn't want Union or anywhere in Tulsa. We wanted Broken Arrow. We went there. We liked it. Besides, academics don't happen out on the campus in the populace. They happen in the classroom. I heard that Broken Arrow's student-teacher ratio was 20:1. Yes, some are higher and some are lower, but that's the curse of averages. That ratio means the academics can happen just fine because those occur between students and teachers. Additionally, both the high school and freshman academy have unused space because we have no teachers to fill the rooms. A split won't change that.

That actually can't be solved locally but at the state level where our current government apparently cares more about their agendas than education but that's another topic entirely. Due to the Oklahoma's inability to manage our money, the student-teacher ratio is going up even down to grade levels where there is classroom space available, but the district can't afford the teachers to fill them.

If Broken Arrow was going to entertain a split, it should have been done years ago before we oriented everything to befit a large scale high school. It's not just the band that would suffer in a split. We have dozens of unique academic opportunities that can only exist in a school with a large population. In our high school, find classes with only one instance or with a single teacher. Classes like that can't survive a split because they require a certain level of interest. Look for clubs that you don't find on every campus. Unusual ones with a low population count. Those also wouldn't survive.

So, in the case of our district, the plan on the table takes two overcrowded campuses and shuffles the students around which gives you ... two overcrowded campuses. The most basic solution is more classrooms and teachers, and I mean more than 10 at each campus. More is under construction now, but until you can alleviate the current overcrowding at each campus, moving students around won't help and certainly is not worth the sacrifice of the Pride.

So let's go back to the Pride. Does the Pride deserve to be considered in a decision that would result in its destruction? Yes. That organization has done more for our community than any of us ever will. The band puts nearly 400 students on the field which is more than any other group. It has the largest parent volunteer organization on campus as well. You may or may not know that schools get a grade for the number of parent volunteer hours logged. The Pride parents log enough hours for the school to get an A rating by themselves. Like the concessions at any high school event? Look who's running it. It's the Pride parents who volunteer their time to serve you concessions at your football and soccer games at the high school and freshman academy stadiums. Behind the scenes of those 400-ish students is a cast of thousands running the show. All out of love for the kids and the program. Does something that important to thousands of people deserve consideration?

Words swirl around in my head when it comes to all of this. Besides progress and sacrifice, I also get legacy and tradition. The band was founded in 1929 and the Pride label was first used in the 70's, I believe. So we've had this high school band for 90 years. To call it a tradition is almost too small a word. It is weaved into the town's very fabric and history, and while I know many things go away over the years in the name of progress, we don't want to lose traditions for the sake of someone's misplaced desire to leave a legacy. If this is passed, the legacy of our board will be that they ended the Pride of Broken Arrow. They consciously voted on a plan knowing the consequence that hundreds of students would lose a life experience that has positively impacted our town and its children for decades.

Dissolving the Pride would be like disowning Kristen Chenoweth, and the Pride is actually more famous. It's not just national. It's international in its fame. Every year tens of thousands of people sit in stadiums, hear the name of Broken Arrow, and they wait to leave the stadium because they know they're going to see something amazing. A speaker at the recent Pride banquet, who was never a member and yet still has Pride gear, was wearing a polo with the Pride logo in places like Columbia and Japan, and he met people who knew us. A guy I work with from Indianapolis told me with considerable pride that his local high school got one of our band directors: Mr. Kaflek. They wanted him because he taught at Broken Arrow. They wanted a piece of the Pride to teach them.

The Pride has hosted a drum Corp competition for several summers now that has brought thousands of people into our town as either part of those ensembles or as spectators who follow them. The Pride has also hosted Oklahoma Bandmaster Association state championships which brings thousands to our town from across the state to watch. The Pride has won this for more than 10 years straight. On the most watched parade in the world this year, the name of Broken Arrow was seen by millions of people because of the Pride. Watch What Happens at football games before and after halftime. People come to watch the band, and then they leave. Seats clear up all over the stadium after halftime. So people pay to go to football games, watch the band, and reveal that's what they came for, not to watch football. How many towns in Oklahoma can boast that some people prefer to watch the local band than the football team? The pride of Broken Arrow is literally one of the best things about Broken Arrow, and you want to end it. Some little town in Oklahoma is recognized across the world because of its marching band. And they want to end it.

Like I said, this is not some apocalyptic doomsday prediction. The directors have already told the students that this would happen if the school splits.

From a first-hand perspective on the impact here, I was in the Pride back in 1991-92 when it was required and we didn't win everything. But we went to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl parade and marched in the Inauguration parade for Bill Clinton. My sister was in D.C. again for Bush's second inauguration. How many of you did that? The Pride is a unique opportunity for our children that will never happen again in their lives. Ever. The reaction of my 6th grader when informed that by the time she reaches 9th grade, there may not be a pride to try out for? Tears. She has been wanting that since she saw the pride perform as a 4th grader. For almost 3 years, it has been in her plans to tryout at the end of 8th grade, and they want to end it. She cried. We consoled her with the idea that it was just a preliminary recommendation and pray that it will never pass. How many more children like her are out there who want more than anything to be a part of that group. It's a major opportunity that will be gone. How many dreams will be shattered? Do they matter?

So does something need to be done? Sure. But we don't need to split the campus. We don't need multiple high schools. There are a wealth of other problems that can also create but I've talked long enough. What we really need is better management of what we have. If we can't manage this, how are we supposes to handle changing things around? There are bigger high schools in the nation with 4, 5, and even 8,000 students in a physical location. Rather than going right to a split, why not investigate their solutions with a big campus? Carmel, IN is a nationally recognized school for its academics and such and it has the Freshman on campus too, giving them 5,000 students. Universities are massive with tens of thousands of students and they manage as well.

Broken Arrow has something amazing right now. We should never want to lose it now or in the future. "But we're growing" people say. According to the current numbers, we have a peak coming with a class of 1500, but looking over all the numbers, it is unique. They're also 2nd graders. The numbers behind it didn't grow. Could we get bigger? Yes. Do I have a suggestion? Well, we need to ensure we manage our funding correctly and ensure what was promised is done. It's 2017 and according to the schedule, our STEM classrooms for the high school were funded last year. They've decided to hold off on those for now. Yeah, we need more classrooms and they won't build them. The high school campus was built for juniors and seniors and a full campus was pushed to capacity by haphazardly adding in the sophomores. I thought that was a bad idea at the time as well.

To alleviate the stress, rather than a third high school, which was proposed, building a sophomore academy was a very popular notion. This would give the current campus plenty of growth room for the future since we've established how many students it can hold. I would be for reallocating the bond money to make that happen.

Even beyond that and beyond the proposal that was slowed down for the moment, and that we hope will not resurface, the community does not realize the good the Pride does for it. They don't realize that people have come here just to be part of that. Alumni stay here so their kids can be a part of it. People who aren't part of the band know it. The guy in charge of the Rose Parade sent a video message for the banquet looking forward to seeing the Pride again, perhaps, in four years. Little does he know that the current proposal means there won't be a Pride to go in four years. The speaker at the banquet looked forward to seeing the progress of our percussion ensembles in the WGI tournaments in ten years. In ten years, we may not be going. If we told someone outside of our band that our school board was considering something to end the Pride, they would think we lost our minds.

Broken Arrow current has one identity. We are Tigers. Businesses support the singularity of the teams and clubs they like because it is easy. There is only one to support. Splitting us would split the town. We would have to pick a side. Businesses would too. Bond issues would forever have to appeal to both sides or it won't pass. That's what the facilitator we brought in said to someone after one of the meetings. He thought the split was a terrible idea. He's also from a district with a 4000+ population high school.

We need progress, but we need the right kind of progress. The proposal we had was wrong for us in many ways, and we hope to never see it again. There is some suggestion in the wording from the district that we might get it back with some extra explanation showing that they did not listen to us and did what they wanted. We want something that will be beneficial to the most students, not ruin the town, and solve our underlying problem.

An Attempt to Inform On A Reply

So, my post on the Broken Arrow school split was seen by a lot of people, and obviously, not everyone agreed. Interestingly, however, a lot of feedback has resulted from people whose response was uninformed and unresearched. I intended to do a longer post, but this one came through Facebook, and I thought I'd address it.

"George. Unfortunately what you think and the politics that play out.  Broken Arrow needs at least 2 high schools and possibly 3.  I personally among others within the school system tend to agree.  Split the schools up including Pride.  The system is TOO large and needs to be split up so it will give the others fair share of making the Pride.  Two Pride in Broken Arrow is not a BAD thing.  Let's face it, Broken Arrow is too BIG for one High School.  I'm not the only one that feels this way!!

Never have been a fan of yours even when you worked at US Cellular.  To me you were nothing but a trouble maker and I still see this as true.  You sir are NOT a team player.  You want to create havoc among thE TEAM and others that I know tend to agree.  I personally hope that BA is split up in ALL areas including PRIDE."

Part of me gets that this is a bit personal. I am, shall we say, in with a large group of people who do not want to see the schools split. Hence, I am standing with my "team" and assisting them. I admit to being a bit of a troublemaker, but in this case, I have a cause that I am standing up for, and I believe this is the right way to go.

Are there a fair number of people for the split? Oh yes. Plenty. The problem is that many of those opinions ring similar to this one. It isn't a bad thing. More bands are good. The high school is too big. The city can support more than one. In principle, these opinions are not wrong, but we also have to consider the local environment and what we've built so far.

Two Prides? No. It was established right from the start that the Pride as we know it would end. Due to OSSAA regulations, each school would need its own competitive marching band and due to the dilution of talent and smaller base to draw from, the optional extracurricular Pride would need to return to the required presence for all band students. Not everyone wants to be in marching band and enjoy the option. Additionally, they indicated that since it would be required, they would have trouble asking for the presently high fees associated with being in Pride. A reduction in cost is a reduction in everything, and some of the national competitions or traveling they do now would be cut down considerably. When it was required in my time, OBA was pretty much the end of our season with a "big trip" every other year.

The system is too large? That is a matter of perspective. We're actually comparable to Union and Jenks in our high school size. And when it comes to Broken Arrow's size, that matters less than the number of students at the campus. We hurt ourselves considerably when we added in the sophomores to the population and made a large campus overwhelming. We have also established, however, how many students it can hold, so pulling those sophomores back out would leave plenty of growth room.

And there's that "fair share" argument. By having more of the same thing, somehow that gives more students more opportunities. Knowing that the Pride as it is with all of its present opportunities will be gone, that will actually be one less thing available to the students. We also know that there are many, many activities possible at a large high school that a smaller one cannot support, both extracurricular and academic. We have specialty classes for students that help them learn in their desired future fields. One of our favorites to mention is an AP Physics 2 class that has 8 students. It used to have 12 before 4 dropped at semester. It's that hard. That class would not survive a split because it wouldn't have enough people. There is also only one AP Physics teacher. Would the class be limited to only one campus? Would only half the district get AP Physics? Would they have to hire a second special teacher for that with the money we don't have for that purpose? A split would be a really, really expensive endeavor which is bad in the current economic climate for schools.

I am formulating a much larger post addressing a lot of the pro-split opinions I've heard in the past couple of months. This thing isn't dead yet, but I do hope some serious discussion is going to to make the best choice for OUR district. Large high schools work, and they work well. They're all over the country in populations larger than ours, so there's plenty of precedents.

About Voting

Elections are a thing in the United States and in many other places in the world, but it seems that when voting comes around, there is a minor misconception people get when doubling down to make that decision. Major parties warn you not to "throw away your vote" or in the case of the last presidential election "cast a protest vote." Neither of these is actually possible.

When one votes for something, the intention is that they engage in a conscious decision to put forth their voice to say which of the available choices they think are best. There is, in fact, no way for anyone to throw away their vote (or make a protest vote). Any vote put forth in good faith to make a decision in one's own best interest is a valid decision...whether that decision turns out to be the winning one or not.

My impression of some people is that when they enter into a voting situation, they get caught up in a game mentality. In the musical, Hamilton, some secondary characters are pondering who to vote for in the election of 1800: Adams, Jefferson, or Burr. When Adams is considered, the comment is made "He's gonna lose, that's just defeatist." This comment is right in line ith the idea that voting for someone who can't win is throwing your vote away. The idea of an election or vote of any kind is to determine the desires of the people, not for the people to play a game to guess who is going to win. Sometimes, you'll even hear about those who guessed wrong later. They'll say they voted wrong because their angle lost.

That's not why you vote. There is no prize for picking the winner. Unless you put money on it, but the legality of that is questionable in some areas.

The point of this is that when you vote, you are supposed to go in with the mindset to always make the outcome better, and even if that entails putting your voice behind something you think may lose, that's fine. If you believed in it, you did the right thing.

If everyone in the country stopped guessing the winner and started voting their heart, maybe we'd start making some positive progress.

Forty

My birthday is on Friday, and I'm turning forty. Birthdays tend to be a time to reflect on a life and see where you stand after another year, but forty is a bigger milestone. It's basically a centerpoint since your average lifespan on this rock is around eighty years. Hence, I've been really thinking lately about what I wanted to do with my life and whether I've actually done that or not.

The biggest thing in my life has been my family, and to that end, I've been very successful. Been happily married for sixteen years, and my children are doing very well. I know what it takes to be married and how to stay that way. I know that it takes compromise and the desire to remain in a relationship in order to succeed, and I have been able to see where people have failed in that regard. I've always been a bit of a loner, but being in a solid relationship for what amounts to almost eighteen years (when you count the dating aspect of our relationship), I have a decent handle on what makes one work.

Moving past the relationship, however, I'm a failure. I have been in a job for the last eight years, and I've been successful in it because I'm exceptionally smart. That's about it. I probably the only one in my position without a college degree because I can just do what I need to, and I do it better than anyone else. Why don't I have a college degree? Because this isn't what I wanted to do, and it still isn't. I'm in the job I have to have in order to survive.

With everything else I do, when I run down the laundry list of what I've done, it sounds very impressive. I've written three full musicals and one was staged. I've had a play performed. I've published four books, and I've written dozens if not hundreds of songs. I can play lots of instruments, though my preference always falls to piano, and I can even play and sing at the same time. I've written a lot of screenplays, and I even produced and directed a couple of them. I've written the soundtracks for not only my movies, but also two others. I've recorded a ton of music which I arranged and performed. But none of that actually means anything since none of it is a living.

So I have written four books, and am wrapping up a fifth, which is the fourth in a series I'm writing. I've self-published all of them because no publisher is interested. People who have read them are enthusiastic, but they don't sell because it is not well known. This is what I want to do, and the world just doesn't want me to do it.

The musicals are all old, and I've never done anything further in that area because no one wants to hear any of it. They want stuff they know from people they've heard of. Unknowns get no attention.

Screenplays are fun, but again, unless you're established, no one cares.

I perform as a musician regularly in public at my church, and it's fun enough. Of course, that doesn't pay so there is no living there. Just to have some measure of success, I've written a lot of worship related songs, but my worship leader is not interested in them either. I can't even give away my work.

So I've a rousing success in the personal department. But I'm an absolute and unequivocal failure professionally. My epitaph will be "He never stopped trying." Trying is all I have though.

People pay attention to kids who appear to be very talented, and they believe that with so much talent, that kid will certainly do well. Well, here is a guy on the far side of that equation bursting at the seams with a ridiculous amount of talent, and you know what? No one cares. It doesn't matter one lick how much talent you have. I don't even have to give some random made-up example about someone with a lot of talent failing because I am that person. Everyone I meet remarks how talented I am, but it doesn't mean anything. If anything, being that talented alienates me from everyone else because no one has any idea how to relate to me. Being that talented has hurt me more than it has helped because there are very few people out there like me. When one has no experience with someone who has such an overarching talent range, they treat you just like everyone else.

You know what? I'm not everyone else. I never have been. It sounds stupid to say I'm special, but that's what it boils down to. Everyone has their specialties, and some people actually get to use them. I get to use what those in charge designate as useful and they waste the rest.

I want to be done, but that would be succumbing to failure. I don't want to be a failure. I don't.

But I am.

Levels of Friendship

So I was talking to Rock Girl the other day about what I see as friendship, and I hit upon an explanation that perfectly explains what this friend phenomenon means to me and why I see it the way I do. I figured this would be worth sharing so I'd remember it, and so maybe someone out there might find this insightful. I've done no real research here. I'm just typing.

First, it is important to understand what I would call "life segmentation." Our lives are split into different, very distinct facets where we have to know or do certain specific actions in order to maintain a level of peace within that segment. The most common segments in one's life include home, work, school, church, hobby, and family. The difference between home and family involves the difference between immediate and extended family and the social aspects of the latter. In each of these parts, we know people, and I'm sure you'll notice in thinking of your own life that people in these individual segments don't often cross. This is an important aspect of my view on friendship.

Now, my list of levels

1. Someone you know - Whether we know it or not, we know a lot of people. If this were written in Spanish, I would have used two different words for "know" because the first involves knowledge while the second involves personal information. Thing is, we can all probably think of a long list of names of people we know who inhabit our various segments. I can name people in a variety of professional capacities in my office, I know lots of people's names at church, and I can list random people who I know by name and function who fit into various parts of my life, but I know little more about them beyond their name and function. Those people are not friends or acquaintances. They are just people who exist that you know who rank only slightly above the unknown because at some point you learned their name. This is not a diss to any of them, mind you. I just can't tell you that the guy who works in the mail room (whose name I do know) is a friend of mine on any level any more than the various spouses of the people on the worship team. They are just people I can identify by name.

2. Professional Acquaintance - This is a person who occupies a single segment of your life that you speak to on a regular basis, but rarely, if ever, about anything other than topics that fit within the boundaries of that segment. If they're at work, the conversation is always about work stuff. If they're at church, the conversation revolves around church stuff. These are people about whom you might know a little more such as spouse or children, but you never sit down for a discussion on a personal level. You know what their function is within your segment, and you generally stick to that. When referred to at all, these people often are described as their function above all else.Your boss (or the person in charge of your segments) is the most common person in this category.

3. Acquaintance - This is a person who occupies a single segment of your life that you can speak to about something involving other segments. These people are generally referred to as friends, but when you talk about them to people in other segments, they are almost referred to as "the friend at work" or "someone from whatever." Their friendship is grounded within that segment, and while it might survive outside of that segment, that step has not been taken. If you pay close attention to how this list runs, you might even catch that it sounds like the steps of a relationship. That's because before you can (should) get romantically involved with someone, they have to become a friend first. The "friend zone" is dreaded among the dating, but the fact is that people who are looking for a long term relationship will pass through these steps, sometimes quickly. However, when dealing with people who are friends, the vast majority of friendships that are referred to as friendships live right here.

4. Friend - A friend is a person who comfortably occupies more than one segment of your life. At some point, after knowing of this person, then learning what they do, and then getting to know them on a personal level, the segment wall was broken and they crossed over into a different segment. Where this occurs is tricky because the person has to fit within more than one segment on a regular and easy basis. My most recent attempts to cross people over from acquaintance to friend have failed because they never hit any kind of regular or comfortable basis. These are going to be people on whom you can call when you need someone, and they're generally going to get to know people who are within the other segments of your life because they can fit by your side regardless of which segment you happen to be in at the time. Getting an acquaintance to become a friend requires effort on the part of both sides, and while basic friends tend to travel along this path in a very leisurely manner, dating tries to cram all of these steps together and rush them as quickly as possible, which is why dating seems so difficult to some. The people in this area are very special because you won't have very many of them, and as such, people will sometimes refer to them as "best friends," but to me, that term is reserved for one more level. The major difference between this level and the next is that this bond is still breakable. Someone here can be pulled in other directions, whether by personal interest, another person, or life itself, and end up leaving the friendship, albeit with some difficulty sometimes.

5. Best Friend - The rarest of them all. Sometimes, this person is actually a family member, but if they are not biologically related, they might as well be family. This is a person you would trust with your life because you know they trust you with theirs. You unconditionally love this person. Unconditional love is not the romantic kind of love, though you should definitely be at the best friend level with someone before you marry them. Unconditional love means that no matter what happens, good or bad, the relationship you have with this person cannot be broken except through something very, very significant or traumatic. Building someone from level 1 to here takes significant time and effort, and so very few friendships ever reach this level. When they do, though, it is something special.

0. Family - I have to place family members off to the side because family is usually forever whether anyone likes it or not. The bond we share with the ones to whom we're related is different from the levels of friendship though they can occupy places in those levels. Our family relationships can sometimes be firmly placed in certain levels of my list, but more often than not, they circumvent the level convention because we usually have very little choice as to their presence. Hence, you have that unconditional love element often running through the family even though they might only feel like a professional acquaintance. Weird thing, relationships.

Ok, so that being said, I found that upon examining my life, I have no friends. I have quite a few acquaintances, but they all live firmly within their boundaries. Facebook doesn't count as breaking the segments. I have people at work, and they stay there. I know the worship team, and they stay there. I know other people at church, and they stay there.

There is exactly one person who lives on the border of acquaintance and friend in my life, but attempts to cross that line have failed. He invited me into his hobby segment, and while I enjoyed it, I never belonged there, so the comfort bit failed. I have him as an xbox friend, but we've only ever played one game together. I have borrowed games on occasion, but that doesn't really count as crossing the lines. He did buy my books, and I have him in some level of confidence on their future, but all those conversations took place within the office. It is within that segment that the relationship with him lives, so he remains merely an acquaintance.

If you disagree with my list, I don't care. This is how I see the world. It works for me. Someone might try to reclassify everything to show that maybe I do have friends, but reclassification is an exercise in futility. It won't change reality. I live in the real world. This list is simply a way of organizing it.

Life Insurance

It's that time of year again: time for annual insurance enrollment, where the powers that be decide that you can change how your insurance plans are setup. It's also where if you decide you want to keep what you have, but don't do anything, they automatically give you the top tier plan. It happened to me. I don't understand it.

Anyway, in the course of looking over the options, I ran across something I've seen on there every year since I started: the life insurance. I've never taken it. You know, when you buy something, you get it with the express purpose of using it or expecting to use it at some point. It's there if you need it, but the point is that you're the end user of the product. Life insurance doesn't work that way. It's a monetary value of what your life is worth to everyone around you, so that if you happen to lose it for whatever reason, they can have some solace in the idea that they are very well paid in your sudden absence (and can pay for the funeral and plot of ground that will house your mortal remains).

I stared at the options for a very long time, and so far, I've not brought myself to make a choice. This is my sixth time to have said choice at my present employer, and I just can't. To make matters worse, there are separate options for you and your spouse. This means that you can choose yourself or your significant other but you don't have to pick both if you don't want to. That sort of choice makes you face the fact that your life has a limit to it. We don't like to think about that, but at some point somewhere down the road, it's going to end.

I want to pretend I'm different. I've bared aged in awhile, but pondering this makes me admit that it'll happen. I still act and feel quite young, and to be honest, I act younger than most people my age. They and those even younger complain about all kinds of "old people" stuff, but not me. No, I will live until Jesus comes.

Part of me feels like if I decide to make the election for either myself or the Queen, it's like an invitation for the end. If I choose only me, that feels responsible. If I choose only her, that makes me feel like I'm asking for her to pop off (which makes me a bit of a jerk, if you're keeping score). If I go with both, I wonder about the children since that sort of preps us both for the long sleep.

It's a question for which there is no scientific answer, and one that theology can't agree upon. What does happen? Christianity mostly says if you're good (and follow Jesus), you go straight to heaven, while if you're anything else, you're in eternal damnation. Others say it's a sleep, of sorts, until God's return when you're risen to be judged, and either insert prior heaven and hell notions or the good join him, while the not-so-good return to the ground for eternal death. Some believe in ghosts being spirits of the dearly departed trapped on our plane instead of wherever, and others believe in reincarnation where you just keep coming back. But the non-religious types would just say once you're dead, you're dead.

As for me, I keep an open mind. I believe in God and Jesus, and know that there is a place prepared for the great beyond, but I can't really quantify it. The promise of eternal life is there, and I do believe that, but it remains an unknown, and I feel like there is more to do here. The Parable of the Ten Talents always weighs upon me, and I don't want to be the guy caught having squandered his life.

What will I do about my insurance quandry? Well, I'm not really superstitious, but I don't know. I still feel like electing something is just asking for trouble. Yet, responsibility would say that not electing is reckless. And so the debate will ever rage inside my head.

Ice In Soda

Whether you call it soda, pop, or have conversations that flow like this:
"You want a coke?"
"Yup."
"What kind?"
"Dr. Pepper."
Then you know what I'm talking about. Carbonated beverages. Many of us drink them with practically every meal when eating out, and they go hand in hand with the ice within them. Now, when you think about the ice in your soda, you usually think it is there to keep the drink cold or possibly make it ever colder while simultaneously watering it down. In fact, when the soda fountains are self-serve, I occasionally got no ice at all since the drinks were refrigerated in the machine and I drink it too fast for it to get cold.

You see, I drink a lot of fluids. For some reason, my body processes fluids incredibly fast and so I get dehydrated very quickly. I can knock back a gallon of water of day. For the sake of comparison with two of the most recommended amounts of water one should drink, that's 16 glasses compared to 8, or at least 33% more than half my weight in ounces.

Anyway, I discovered that the ice in soda has another purpose.

The fountain machine we have at work has a bit of a problem. It overcarbonates creating massive heads on the soda it puts into your cup. Without ice, I stand there and either stir it or just wait for it to fizz down to put more in. It can take awhile. Now, you may know that interacting with the bubbles makes the head of the soda go down faster. Some people put a finger in there or blow on it to drive the bubbles down and such, and it turns out ice does the same thing.

The existence of ice in the drink helps to drive the head of the drink down much like stirring it or otherwise interacting with the bubbles. I found that interesting.

What Is Success?

When you're growing up, and you think about what you want to do, people say if you work hard enough, you will succeed. So what do you consider yourself if you work that hard your entire life, and despite all your hard work, you still cannot succeed? Are you a failure? Do you just need to work harder? Or is there another factor that no one ever tells you about because it is so discouraging to know how it is to your success that knowing that there is an element you can't control can discourage you.

I am talking, of course, about other people. To make it even more discouraging, it isn't just other people, it is the right people. You can be the top of your field. Better than Einstein. Better than da Vinci. Better than Mozart. Better than Spielberg. You could have ideas and works that could change the world forever. You could run the country better than any leader in its history. But if you don't know the right people, it will never happen.

It is all a matter of pure luck, really. Most of the world's success stories rely just as much on the right place at the right time with the right person as much as they do the hard work and talent of the individual. Some of those stories could have just as easily ended in an arrest as they did in success. Those are the lengths to which people have gone to achieve their goals.

Success is like a chain where one link leads directly to the next but like a chain, where is the first link? People love to have been the first to know something after it gets big, but they never want to go first on something new.

What does this mean for you? Just an acknowledgement. Success is hard work, make no mistake about it. You have to possess the talent to make something of yourself in any field.

But it is just as much finding the right ear to hear you.

Misguided Commercials

It is no secret that commercials seem to forget what happens in the real world. Their depictions of everyday life are often beyond laughable. One that seems to repeat itself is just how much money companies seem to think that the average person has on hand at any given time.

A recent bank commercial that inspired this post depicted someone going to the store and buying a little more than was on their list. How much more? Well, that was the joke as we heard the back up sounds of a large truck backing into their driveway. The implication was that this guy could just go out on a whim and buy a truck load worth of merchandise just like that. Absolutely no one in my circle of friends is capable of spending that much at one time. Not that they would have on hand in their bank account anyway, which was what this commercial implied.

Another recent one has a daughter asking dear old dad for concert tickets, and because dad gets double points or something for each purchase, he offers to take every friend she has, he'll go, and take his friend as well. Nothing in this commercial suggests he is anything above average, yet he apparently has a fortune tucked away somewhere.

When I thought about this further, I realized that businesses do actually think this about their average consumer. Anytime I sat through any class on sales, they always told us that a no answer was not a true no, but just a request for more information. They believed that if you pushed hard enough, the person would see the value in the product and always buy it. They never believe that a no means that they do not have the money.

When I had to deal with collection agencies back when I was really broke, I told one that I was unable to pay, and he made a big point of saying that he noted that I refused to pay. That is what companies think of us. We are all sitting out here with millions of dollars at our disposal and just not buying from them. They believe if they push hard enough they will get us to buy something.

Personally, I am on a limited budget, and I cannot simply spend lots and lots of cash on just anything. And unless my ship really comes in, I can't see me buying a truck load of anything.

Come on. That's just silly.

Dumbest Reason I Was Ever Fired

You know, in my life, I've had quite a few jobs. Some were good. Some were bad. And from most of them, I was unceremoniously "let go" for one reason or another. Most of the time, it was something absolutely stupid, or I messed up in some way that they just sacked me over. However, for no reason in particular today, my mind wandered to what I consider to be one of the dumbest reasons I was ever fired.

For the Queen's sanity, I will note that my present job in not in the remotest bit of jeopardy.

Anyway, at the time in question, I had applied for a job via a temp agency and landed me a not half bad data entry position. At the time, it was a pretty decent job, so I was content enough to have gotten it. On my second day there, some kind of discussion started over jobs and such, and however the discussion got there, I remarked that there has to be a reason to fire you. Employers can't just up and fire you for no reason.

To prove they certainly could, they up and fired me for no reason. Seriously. The person from the temp agency asked what happened, and I told her about the discussion, and she said that as a temp, they could decide not to keep and basically fire me on a whim. So they did. Just to prove a point.

Obviously, the take away from this experience was never tell your employer what they can or can't do. They'll show you exactly just how much power they possess. I suppose it didn't help that I'd only been there a day when that discussion happened.

I promise you it never happened again. That's for sure.

How to Completely Derail a Problem Discussion

So, you're in a situation be it via email or conference call discussing some kind of problem which has arisen. The issue has been established, and people are working to get to the heart of the matter by attempting to sort out what needs to be done and who needs to do it. Somewhere, someone returns to the source of the original information in an attempt to figure out the intent or perhaps the mindset behind some level of advisement.

Then, out of no where, someone asks why, but it's a why something happened that can only be speculation and its answer has no bearing on the actual problem or its solution. It usually amounts to a bit of the blame game when it happens because someone asks why you asked so-n-so, or why someone did that thing they did. Where most questions to that point had flowed in a completely logical fashion, the right-field "why" kinks it all, and since no one wants to admit that they don't care, the conversation ends up completely derailed with guesswork and speculation.

When I'm looking to solve a problem, I keep it simple: what did you want it to do, or what sort of solution are you looking for? Never have I asked why they did it or why someone was bothered about it. Sometimes I wonder, but I know that it just comes off as accusatory and most of the time, it adds far more time to any discussion that I can spend doing something else.

The most recent eyeroller had to do with a discussion over how something worked, and really, it wasn't my specialty anyway. They had possibly misunderstood the original info and added the original people onto the email. The original person derailed the entire conversation by asking why the asker asked my group instead of, you know, just answering their question to him. Then the email string went off the deep end never returning to its original topic.

Seriously, there are questions with irrelevant answers. Some say there are no stupid questions, but I assure you there are. They are just trying to spark discussion when they say that. In fact, there are hosts of stupid, pointless and irrelevant questions that should never be asked in a group setting. If you are about to ask a question that will not, in any way, benefit the group, don't ask it. If you are asking a question that you are throwing out for the direct purpose of blaming someone else for something, don't ask it. If you feel like you have to lead the question with an apology, don't ask it. And finally, if you think your questions requires a disclaimer, either don't ask it or don't provide the disclaimer. Seriously, no one cares.

And finally, to clear up another fallacy: the customer is not always right. Ask anyone in technical support.

The Turning Of A Page

You ever get something that is somewhat mundane in nature, and yet for reasons unexplained, the creators of said object have placed an inordinate amount of work into some feature that provides no real value or functionality? When you look at most things, everything serves some kind of purpose, even colors which provide some aesthetic value. Most of the time, companies won't waste their time in tossing in stuff that is completely pointless.

Today, I saw an email that contained a link to our annual benefits novel, which was provided as an online doc rather than cutting down a forest to send it to everyone (which I'm sure they've done anyway). It opened up in this e-reader, similar to what I've seen used by store ads online. I'm sure you've seen these before. You hover your mouse in the lower corner of the "page", the page reacts and you can drag it over like you're turning a real page (you know, instead of clicking the little right arrow at the bottom of the screen like a sane user).

I caught the sound out of the tinny speaker in the CPU (since I really don't care about sound on my work computer; that's what headphones are for). Yeah, in this benefits document that 90% of the users will read at work, they bothered to take the extra time and expense to include a page turning sound. I can't even imagine how many man-hours went into this extremely minor and utterly pointless detail. I suppose that's my insurance premiums at work.

Every since then, I've been looking for something to compare how absolutely pointless that sound is, and I got nothing. There is literally nothing I can think of off the top of my head that would hold less consumer value than the sound of a turning page in an online benefits manual. There's a new simile for you.

That's as useless as the sound of a turning page in an ebook. And yet, that page turn sound will still be more pointless than whatever you compared it to.

Two Ways To Play

In the world of video games, the spectrum spans between two types of players. There are the casual ones who will play a little of everything that comes into contact with their system, and when they play, they just go until they feel like stopping, and then move on. Then there are the hardcore ones who will start a game and play it to its absolute conclusion. This type does not play just any game, but carefully select their next conquest like a general surveying the enemy. Your average gamer will range somewhere between the two extremes tending towards hardcore on some types of games and casual on others.

I was recently friended by someone who I failed to note played video games and even asked me about the Xbox on a prior occasion. Obviously, this time, I gave him my tag and once he sent the request, I was able to stalk ... er, I mean review the games he has played. Where my list is at 99, his is sitting at 442. Obviously, a part of this is because he has had his Xbox for longer than I've had mine (I found his oldest achievement to be earned on November 20, 2006 vs my December 25, 2011), but based on how incomplete his list of games is, I would put him as a casual gamer.

His list of games is littered with sort of begun games all nestled down around a handful of achievements with less than half being above the fifty percent mark. His overall percentage is 37, which considering just how many games he has on his tag is not exactly terrible. I noted a few games here and there that he was really dedicated to, completing them into the 80 and 90 percentiles, and he did complete 20 of them. None of this is meant to put him down or cause any insult, I promise. It simply indicates what amounts to an overall casual gamer.

I have another friend who recently found the true achievement site, and is casually working to get a higher completion on some of his games, but he suffers from a lack of play time, and as such, many of his games are still fairly low, but he is fortunate to only have 27 of them on his list to work with, but he has completed 3 of them so far.

Personally, I was casual for about a year before I discovered a fascinating achievement site at trueachievements.com where I completely junked out over the games and became a bit more hardcore (though not before I had all the earmarks of casual on my gamertag). As such, I gathered a handful of just really stupid games that I had rented and really disliked, and if I want to bring my overall percentage up, I now have to revisit them. Of my 99 games, I have a completion percentage of 47.89, and my overall goal is to eventually hit 80. I do have 50% on more than half of them, and I hope to hit a 50% overall rating around the end of the month, though by the looks of it, it will be a few days into November before I hit it. That site has some sweet tracking tools that I easily obsess over.

When you think about it, I'm sure we all start out as the casual gamer type regardless of whether it is actual games or other things in life. We begin by exploring and trying different things and build up a little experience with this and that before finding what we like and settling in. When we find our hardcore, we generally focus that attention on a small subset of where we start, much like the friend with nearly 450 games. He tried a lot, but devoted his attention to a certain type of game that he finds himself good with.

There are people out there who have changed gamer tags when they've moved from casual to hardcore so that they can control their completion percentages and ensure that they fully complete everything they touch and more carefully screen their games. While this is possible in the Xbox world, it hides a little of the truth of one's past by painting them as a perfect player when they really aren't. If I went to a new gamertag just to get 100%, I would have to replay so many games that I would lose more time than I would gain by starting new stuff. Yes, my percentage would be higher, but at a cost I'm not willing to pay. My tag with all its ups and downs is an accurate reflection of my Xbox gaming history, and really, there is nothing wrong with it.

This also serves as a sort of life metaphor where you can never escape from your past or even hide it as it all becomes a part of you. Yes, you have that Yoostar game on there with 12 achievements you can never attain. Yes, Transformers: The Game is there will all its gloriously horrible play control, and you never want to see it again. And yes, Child of Eden will forever taunt you with its achievements that are so hard to get, its True Achievement ratings are some of the highest on the site. Yet, how does this differ from bad decisions made and learned from in real life? Maybe you should have done this or shouldn't have done that, and all you can do is move on.

Naturally, the biggest difference is that anyone can look at your Xbox gaming history in all its glorious detail where your mind can be a closed book keeping your history carefully hidden. But just like having the Michael Jackson Experience and Just Dance Kids 2 in your gaming history doesn't make you a dance game enthusiast (ok, yes, and that Dance Central 3 sitting at 94%, whatever), elements of your past do not necessarily define your person at present.

I kind of went down a philosophical rabbit hole on this post, but no matter. Your past can make you who are, but it doesn't necessarily define you. Be yourself.

Relentless Updates

Here's something that came to mind as I sat down to another security alert from Java as it wants to make another update. Updates.

When a program is released, it is usually put out there "as good as it gets" for the moment until something surprising comes along to derail it, and the developer is forced to put out an update to fix whatever problem arose. These updates, or patches, are only possible because our computers are almost permanently online with a fairly speedy connection, where once upon a time, if a developer put out a program that required a patch, the consumer was screwed.

I recall one such game, called Riven (a sequel to Myst), that froze at a certain point of the game, and after some digging, I learned that the game was glitched and required a patch to fix it. I located said patch (I don't remember how) and popped that on a 3.5" disk to load into the game directory. It fixed the problem. Nowadays, your xBox or whatever would simply download the patch as soon as it was available and you'd never know there was a problem.

This ease of update has led to quite a bit of laziness on the part of some developers since they know once problems come up, they can instantly fix it and move on. This means that you, as a user, basically become unpaid beta testers of some companies' products since your instant feedback (read: ire over a crappy game) will enable the developers to correct issues they might never have found without months of more testing. One particularly heinous example was the release of the game Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. If you have the original Xbox or PS3 version of this game that came out on release day, you have a game that is can never be played without the update. The game was so badly glitched (all Lego games are inherently glitched, but this one was the worst) that the company was forced to replace all the game discs for the Wii owners since the Wii was not able to take game updates. If you're like me, however, and waited till the game went down to 19.99, then your disc is fine.

I use this update thing as a sort of gauge as to the worthiness of a particular product. For instance, Java (although supposedly in every product ever) seems to be one of the buggiest things out there. My computer gets updates almost daily for it meaning the developer finds something wrong with it almost daily.Oh sure, you might say, "well, they are improving it," and that is undoubtedly true some of the time, but developers would not update a product with newer and better stuff on a daily basis. A good portion of these are likely patches to fix bugs.

Another is Adobe Air. The Amazon Cloud Player uses this, and guess what has to update every single time I use it. Yeah. It tells me to close what I'm doing so it can make its update, so I let it finish what it is doing and then tell it to update. I figure it worked last time, and it'll work this time without their precious update. Obviously, the Air does something that the Cloud Player uses, but whatever that is has nothing to do with the updates it makes.

I know these are free, of course, but it still stinks that those developers can't just put out something that works the first (or even second) time without persistent updates that slow everything down while you wait for them to basically say, "Whoops, hang on a minute while I fix this."

The Computer Call

So last night as we're sitting down to a healthy dinner of chili dogs and Star Trek, we get a call from some guy with a Farsi accent telling me that he is calling about my computer. Now, these people have called before, but in my initial interrogation, they eventually hung up because the answers they gave made absolutely no sense. This time, I kept the guy on the line longer to try and figure out the purpose of his call.

Spoiler: I never did.

Anyway, he said he was calling about my computer, and I asked the most natural question that any geek should have in such a situation: which one? Well, without missing a beat, he said that they had detected that my Windows or Apple Mac computer had unsolicited programs accessing the internet and these programs were not viruses and could not be detected by regular virus software. I asked how, he said he had already told me that. I told him he hadn't, and he insisted that he could show me if I accessed my computer. I told him I would not give him access to my computer, and he said he would walk me through it to show me one of these programs.

Still curious as to what he is selling (I suspect some kind of registry cleaner or spyware/malware cleaner deal), I go ahead and proceed to my nearest computer and ask him to proceed. He asks if I'm the primary user of my computer. I tell him some of them. He paused at this answer, apparently, uncertain as to how to move on, but finally, he went ahead with his spiel. He then asks if I know where the keyboard is. I have to admit that I was completely thrown by the question. I was like, "What about the keyboard?" He asks again if I can find it. I just say yes, thinking he could not have possibly just asked me that.

Then, he asks me to find the C-T-R-L button in the lower left hand corner of the keyboard. I had to take a moment to inform him that he could speed up a bit here since I'm not a first grader, and am, in fact, a rather savvy user/programmer/sometimes hacker. I can keep up. He acknowledges and then asks me if I can find the little banner key that looks like the Windows symbol. I inform him that I'm well aware of what the Windows key is.

He asks me to hold that key down. I wait patiently for the next step, since there is no reason to just hold that key down without pressing some other key. He is guiding me to a Windows speed key combo, and I was not going to just plug that in without knowing what it is. He asks if I'm holding the key down. I ask him what the next keypress is. He asks if I can find the R button. I confirm that he is asking me to pull up the Run dialog box. I use the darn thing all the time.

Thrown by my phraseology, I guess, he mumbled out something I didn't fully understand. Still playing along, I opened the Run box and wait. He asks me if I see the box that says Run on it. I tell him that I can. He asks if I can see the white space in that box. I confirm that I can, and assure him one more time that I can keep up if he would cut to the chase.

Undaunted by my insistence to speed up, he asks if there is anything in that white box. I tell him that yes, there is the last thing that I typed in that box. It was, in fact, the IP address of a network drive in my house that I used to copy some stuff around, though I didn't go into that with him. He told me to press the backspace button to clear that box out. Little did he know that since the info in there is actually highlights when you open the run box, you can usually just start typing, but you know, whatever.

He had, so far, spent five minutes telling me how to pull up the Run dialog box using what was, no doubt, a page of step-by-step instructions in front of him. He finally got to the meat of his instructions. What to type in that precious box. He said to press E as in echo. I press nothing and wait for whatever he wants me to spell out. He asks if I have an E in that box. I ask him what he wants me to type in the box. He says E as in echo. I say ok.

He moves on to V as in Victor. I assure him, once again, that I can keep up and note, and I actually said "for QA purposes," that he was going irritatingly slow when I've repeatedly told him to move it along. He was unmoved and said to put in E as in echo again. He confirmed "E as in echo, V as in Victor, E as in echo." I confirmed, "Are you asking me to pull up the Event Viewer?" and I quickly typed in eventvwr.

About this time, the Queen was telling me not to do anything they told me to, and I assured her I had it under control, and was still just playing along. However, I glanced at the time, and noted that a) my chili dogs are getting cold and b) I was running out of time for Star Trek since they wanted to watch that Toy Story Halloween special at 7.

I told him I had the event viewer open, and asked very directly what I'm looking for. He asked what I see on my screen. I told him there are lots of things on my screen. What does he want me to look for? He asked if I saw event viewer local. I told him yes, and he asked me to list the items below that. I told him no, and asked what the point of this was. He said he was showing me the programs running. I told him that at this point I was kind of annoyed by how slow he was going and that I really didn't have time for this right now.

And I hung up.

I am still curious as to what he was going for, who he was calling from, and what he was selling since he was basically posing as a technical person calling in response to a message sent from one of my computers. This concerned me, and I really wanted to find out who they were to confirm whether they actually did get something from one of my computers or not. Perhaps they'll call again, and I'll torture them then.

Lost to Time

I was talking to the Queen last night, and we delved into some philosophical territory. If you ever give a thought to life and what it means to you and creation, you may eventually come to the sobering revelation that much of what you do on this planet will be completely forgotten, not only by everyone you know, but by you as well. Every day, we seem to trudge forward hoping to make a difference, but when you take two steps back, what sort of difference are we hoping to make? What sort of impact are we hoping for by taking the left road instead of the right one?

I remember seeing a graphic once showing an eventual timeline of the universe from the theoretical big bang to the theoretical burning out and death of everything. It's the sort of thing that brings up the existential question of "If nothing existed, what would there be?" This timeline started with the average person's lifespan and "zoomed out" little by little through periods of earth history to the history of the solar system to the lifespan of the sun and on out, all the while focusing on the period we just came from. It made our lifespan a speck on a universal scale.

Where does that leave us? Even if you ponder known history, our lives are very tiny. How many people have walked the earth? How many lives were lived from birth to death in obscurity? Most of them, actually. The number of truly "famous" people is extremely small. And of the really famous people, how much of their lives are lost? How many are reduced to a series of dates? We can find out dates for Abraham Lincoln on when he was born, died, got married, had children, some of his work, etc., but we do not know much about his childhood beyond what might be anecdotal. We don't know much about his day to day life, even as a president. Sure, major engagements might be recorded, but not the little things. What did he and his wife like to talk about? What was their fondest memory, I wonder? Is there any truth to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter? You see, that movie plays into the fundamental truth that there are gaps in history. It's the same sort of thing that Assassin's Creed III does with the revolutionary war. We know when the major stuff happened, but we can't know the conversations and who went in and out. Maybe there was a freelance assassin named Connor who helped out. Who knows?

While that comes off as ridiculous, that's just famous people. How about the next person that walks past you? How about the person who sits next to you at work? How about the person you might consider your best friend? How much do you know about them? How much do they know about you? Next to nothing is probably fairly close to the truth. You might say, "Well they know this and that," but they also only know what you tell them. Did you cover your childhood in detail? Did you tell them all about your weekend in every detail (ok, so probably)?

Even people who are open tend not to tell of everything. Even if you know it all, that's just you. What happens to their story when they're gone? How much do you know about your parents? Grandparents? Great-grandparents? I imagine the list kept getting shorter. Personally, the extent of what I know about my great-grandparents are their names, birth and death dates, and the dates they got married (for some of them). That's it.

It's as sad as a tombstone. I read once that the most important part of a tombstone isn't the dates that tell birth and death, but the dash that connects them. That dash contains so many experiences and no matter who it is, so much life, that it isn't fair that someone's entire existence is reduced to a dash.

Sometimes, I think when I walk in a crowd of people that attached to every face I see is a story. An entire life story from beginning to the present day just as full and complete as my own. I know that every person who walks past me is walking there for a purpose that they know. They left some place to show up where I saw them for a reason known to them, and once they are done, they will leave and go somewhere else. I may or may not ever see them again.

Billions of stories. Billions of them are lost every day, and we don't even realize it. But really, what could anyone do with all of that? We try to tell our stories to our children, and I dare say, if our children react the way we did upon hearing those stories, they will remember them just as well as we remembered our parents' stories. Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, and I can't help but wonder how many times we've repeated the same mistakes.

Maybe you are one of the few who, like me, have not only created a blog, but have kept up with it by writing down the various things that happen while supplying the occasional story of the past. Swell, but you know that blogger.com isn't forever. Someday, the site will die, and the data will be forever lost, and the stories forever gone.

Then there's the more sobering reality: who reads it anyway? If you're like me, then you probably find that the stats on your site consist of maybe two or three hits a day. It's probably one or two consistent readers, if you're lucky, and some accidental hits.

What does this add up to? It means that all the things that you weigh in your life as so significant are just little things that make up a big picture. They are things that pass and something else will take its place eventually. We are on this rock for a limited time in the larger scale of things, and eventually, we will pass on leaving the rock to someone else. They will eventually forget us. Some may last longer than others, but even those who last will only be a name. People know of Edgar Allen Poe, who never thought he'd be remembered, but he is little more than a name.

As for what comes next, none of us can confirm it. I believe in the Christian ideals where faith in God and Jesus promises an eternal life, but my human brain cannot comprehend something like "eternity." Remember that scale I mentioned. Eternity would be that whole thing and then some. I can't comprehend a hundred years. I have no hope of understanding eternity until I get there.

Point is that while we're here, we have to make the most of what we have to work with. We have our own company to keep, and our families to tend. Life is a miracle, and should always be treated as such.

The Most Basic Of Skills

This one made me literally walk away from my computer. Seriously, I was so dumbfounded that I had no words. Where do I begin?

So the other day I was asked to use a program that I maintain to create some sample files for a client using their data so they can have an idea of what sort of data gets returned. Simple enough request. Get it all the time. This little program returns regular old text files named in a variety of ways, but they can all be opened in notepad, which is the most basic text file reader known to man since DOS's "edit" command.

They didn't tell me where to send the files, so I got them all made up and send them to the people in charge of this client's account, and asked if they wanted to send the files or should I and to whom. Where I lost all my words was the response I got back. It read (word for word): "I am unable to open the files. Can you send them to (so-n-so) directly?"

This person cannot open a basic text file. Every program on the planet can see the contents of this file. You can use any word processor on any platform. You could put that file into Unix and still open it. You can open that file and read it in nearly every program that can open a file without any issues at all (well, not Paint, but why would you even try?). The file type is so basic, most email programs won't even block it, and this person can't open it.

We live in a computer age where opening programs is a part of daily life. I could send this file to my phone and still open it to see its contents. Heck, I could probably text it, and still be able to crack it open. How is it possible this person could not open the files?

I would say it takes all kinds, and I'm sorry, but this is the type of person who would get better reception from a potato than a satellite dish.

Ugh.

That Annoying Van

So two days ago, I went out to start my trusty van using the procedure I have been using for awhile to make sure that it does start (I turn the key to on, wait 30 seconds, then turn it over), and it didn't start. Well, to begin with, it did try to turn over, but halfway though that, it sounded like it choked. It was weird. After that, it gave me nothing, and none of my little tricks worked to make it go. Those tricks being to wait longer with it in on, and manically keep turning the key to start until it kicks it over. I was dead in the water.

As a result, I had to keep the car. Well, it was too late for the Queen to take me to work and then get everyone else around on time, so it was for me to be the late one (since I was already) and take everyone else to their destinations, which also means I needed to pick them all up. That's the smallest part of the issue, though. The big part is the problem itself. I've never been able to figure out what is causing this bizarre issue. If I just turn it on, it won't start. If I let it set for 30 seconds, it works. Granted, I'd not tested any of the components yet, and I know that's the next step.

That being said, it was nice to spend time with everyone that morning even though there was a little stress with the car problem. After I got home that evening, I went out to see if the van would start at all figuring my next step would be decided from there. I got in, and it started right up. Well, since it worked the way it had been, I decided to let it go, and sort it out over the weekend. You know, when I have time to take something apart.

Well, the morning came, and guess what? No start. Not even a tick of a start. The one main difference I notice at this point is that the solenoid isn't clicking. This brings me back to my original belief in that the solenoid is dead and my turning the ignition to on prior to starting had been basically "charging it" where the weird pop I heard that first morning was likely the solenoid completely dying.

To add insult to injury that morning, my ignition tumbler has been stubborn in that sometimes the key won't turn. I always have to tap it a few times with a very large wrench to pop the key into place and turn it. Well, on that morning, it took quite a few taps to get it to turn as well. I think the whole starter system is falling apart, but one thing at a time. I needed to get home, pull the starter, and get it to Autozone to test it.

So my task yesterday evening was to pull that starter out and most likely replace it. I found where it was located in the engine compartment and like most vehicles I've owned, this one looked to be a pain to get out of there. I eventually found where I could use a very long ratchet extension to get at one bolt, but the other bolt appeared to have lost its head entirely. I was very cross about that. I spent probably an hour trying to work the thing loose until it occurred to me that it was bolted to the transmission, which, you may recall, is the first thing that had to be fixed on the van. I thought that surely the guys who did the transmission didn't shear off a bolt head and leave it.

I looked more thoroughly and sure enough, the starter was bolted to the transmission from the opposite side of where the other bolt was attached. No wonder I couldn't find it. Got that loose and it fell right off (you know, after I disconnected the solenoid wires and stuff). Victory. I was off to Autozone after dinner.

At Autozone, they took the starter over to the tester, and as my luck tends to be, it passed the test. However, the guy who ran the test noted that while the machine passed it, it sounded weak. He did not want to just recommend the $100+ replacement since the machine did pass it, but that's what it sounded like to him. I figured it was that or the solenoid anyway, so I decided to replace it.

Here's the funny part. If you ask someone who knows about cars, they'll tell you that the starter is one of the sturdiest components and you rarely have to replace them. I've had to replace 3 starters on vehicles I've owned, and every last one of them passed the test at Autozone. I have some serious doubts about that tester.

Anyway, I popped the starter on the van, and it fixed the problem. In fact, I never realized how rough that van was actually starting. When I turn the key now, it just purrs right to life where it always sounded like it struggled before. Just one more thing to listen for when I buy used again, I suppose.

Man, I really got screwed on the van. See why I'm in no hurry to let them know about their financial screw up? That dealership strikes me as a slip shod operation.

The Real Victim in Mary Poppins

I recently re-watched Mary Poppins for the I-don't-know-how-manyth time, and noted something that I've noticed before but didn't give too much thought. Right at the top of the movie, Dick Van Dyke, as Bert, is dancing around as a street musician entertaining the crowd by coming up with impromptu poems about them. He pops a couple off to applause and laughter (while introducing the minor character of Andrew, who is a dog, and apparently, Mary Poppins speaks dog) until he comes across a nice old lady called "Miss Persimmon." Remember, dear Miss Persimmon?

That's the only picture that came up in a Google search for her. Look how happy she is to have been noticed. If you consider the formation of her name being "miss" instead of "mrs," that would indicate that she is an unmarried woman, and at her age, she would be referred to as an old maid. Who knows why? But at this moment, she's overjoyed that this young man not only acknowledged her, but can actually come up with a clever little poem just for her. Her day has been made.

What happens next? Well, the wind blows, and instead of launching into something clever about Miss Persimmon, Bert talks about the wind changing and something to happen that has all happened before. The crowd can see that he has clearly lost his mind, but before they can pop him off to the loony bin, he jumps into a lively rendition pre-reprise of Step in Time, dancing around the crowd like a maniac.

However, if you watch the background here, you'll notice that Miss Persimmon quickly turns and leaves the crowd entirely. She does not stay to watch his performance and is not there for the applause once he is done. You see, having been called out by the young Bert, she doesn't understand why he did not come up with something about here, and when he stares off and then launches into something else, she is devastated.

Miss Persimmon does not appear the rest of the movie. Granted, most of the people in that first scene don't either, but the point is that within the context of the movie, this poor little old lady had her feelings smashed in the first scene by one of the main characters, and probably spent the duration of the film crying in her brandy at home.

Next time you watch Mary Poppins, remember dear Miss Persimmon. She just wants to be loved.