A few night ago, some friends and I were eating dinner on the patio of a restaurant. We had a great view of the parking lot and could see cars drive in and out of the lot. Pretty soon, a woman in a brand new Mustang pulled up and gingerly backed into a space. The space was tight, but the car fit okay, although one could only assume she was sweating as she arduously turned around to make sure that she didn’t hit anything. She got out of her car, yelled at some other folks on the patio, jumped over the railing and sat down with them. You could tell she was oh so proud of her new car.
The car next to her left, and a little Civic pulled into the open space. It was a tight fit, but the Civic fit into the space nicely. The passenger got out of the car as the table next to me focused in on the event. “Oh, he’s gonna hit your car [with his door],” screamed one of the slightly inebriated women at the table. She continued, “Oooooooh, he hit your car. I could see it. He hit your car.” (This comment was like a statement repeated endlessly.) The owner of the Mustang popped up, jumped over the railing and started trotting out to her car.
She was screaming, “You hit my car! You hit my car.” The man replied, “No sir, no I did not.”
He stood back in the parking lot as she went up to her car. She felt the entire side of the car, seemingly hoping to find a nick or scratch. But she found nothing. The man stood there with his arms crossed just waiting for this woman to discover what he knew all along: that her car was just fine.
The owner informed all of us who were watching this unfold that he didn’t really hit her car. Whew! The drama was intense [sarcasm]. She straightened up and walked back to her table (jumping over the railing again, of course), and turned to us. “I would have to kick his a** if he touched my car.” And we all nodded and laughed.
Of course, I didn’t laugh because that was funny…I laughed because it was sad. I can honestly say that I pitied that woman. You could see that so much of her value was tied up in a $20k car: a nice car, but still, a car. Of course, she wouldn’t have stood a chance against the man if they got into a fight, but still she felt like she had to do so much to protect her stuff. She had elevated her car so much that she worshipped its existence.
The sad thing is that one day she will wash her car and discover a key scratch or a ding in the door. She’ll be dejected. It’s inevitable.
It makes me wonder about all of the things in my life that I have elevated to a point so high that I worship them. It’s sad–because it’s just stuff.
Monthly Archives: April 2006
Complaining
If only we needed a manual to learn to complain:
A Boy Named Pin
There once was a boy named Pin,
Who stood on some steps with a grin.
He lurked on his perch,
With a penchant for works
And he sorely wished to be in.
He fixed his gaze on things afar,
While wishing only to play his cards,
He dreamed of what the others had,
He schemed to make them seem so bad.
The things he spewed he did not care,
He only wished he had their airs.
Comprehend, he could not
The things they did as their lot.
His eyes so bad he couldn’t see
The things they did in reality.
Poor Pin tried not to see the truth,
And in the end was quite uncouth.
The things he said, the things he did,
Puffed up himself, improved his id.
The words he spake,
Destroyed their stake,
And sealed the others’ lids.
Maybe Regurgitation Isn’t the Answer
I have long believed that schools have been failing to prepare students for dealing with the insane amount of information in the world. Everything seems to be “repeat this fact after me;” then I’ll test you on it until your brains rot away. The better way would be: “Here’s the information, and I’m going to help you understand how to remember the concepts and how to find the details when you need them.”
This from Creating Passionate Users: [Moving up the wisdom hierarchy]
If we could teach kids in elementary school just one thing (besides reading), my wish is that it would be systems thinking. But too much of even our adult training/education (including much of what I create) is focused on short-term “just-the-facts-mam” or how-to hacks and tutorials. We obviously need reference info and how-to’s, or everything comes to a grinding halt, but without the higher elements of understanding and wisdom, we might never recognize that the thing we’re learning to do is NOT the right choice!
Two Baths and One Egg
It’s 1:00am and I just walked into my apartment after giving my car its second bath of the day. Why, you may ask, did I give my car two baths in one day? And why did you give it one at 1:00am in the morning? Well, both of those are good questions, and I plan to explore them fully in the next few paragraphs.
Bath one at 11:00am yesterday morning: tt was regular, once-a-quarter bath finished off with a nice coat of wax. Oh how it sparkled in the son. Bath number two: in the dark with a flashlight looking for pieces of egg on my car.
What happened? I’m not sure, but someone had the bright idea to egg all of the cars sitting in front of Ryan’s house: David’s, Wes’s, Sam’s and mine. Sam and David both had the pleasure of a double egg.
I love eggs (and most breakfast food for that reason), but why in the world would make you decide to eggs four cars? We were the only hits on a street full of parked cars? It was an insolent, sophomoric, moronic, contemptible, dirty, malicious, perfidious, and venal behavior. I’m sure it was some bored (and nefarious) youth looking for a good time.
After washing my door at Ryan’s place, I arrived at the apartment to find traces of egg and shell on the roof. So out came the soap and rag, again! And I washed the entire car in the dark. It doesn’t look like it etched the paint (plus the latest coat of wax from this morning likely helped), and I think I got it off in time. I’m definitely a bit peeved and would love to track down these vermin and thump them for this irritating behavior.
Things That Make Me Laugh
Here’s a recap of some recent funny events in my life. Thanks to everyone who unknowingly participated in this post.
Story 1
When my family was in town last weekend, my mom mentioned that she knew of a couple girls that she could see me dating. My sister, always one to know things like that (okay, I was curious too), convinced my mom to tell her who the girls were. They walked off and my mom shared.
They walked back, and Erin informed me, “Those girls are way too nice for you.”
[Everyone pauses]. “Thanks, Erin,” I replied. And we all laughed because it was funny.
Story 2
My double-boss (boss’ boss) had some phone problems the other day. He told Chris, my boss, (the tech. director at the church) that his phone was acting up. Chris responded by slamming the phone to the table, screaming something along the lines of “stupid phone.” Of course, everyone in the meeting was shocked, and they got a good laugh out of it.
Later that afternoon, Chris was replaying the scene for me (because it was funny), so he slammed the phone down on his desk. And we laughed again. That is, we laughed until he opened the phone and saw that the screen was oozing something and no longer worked. This was funny because he hadn’t moved the phone numbers over to the new phone yet.
Chris ended it out by saying, “I guess we’ll be going to the Sprint store tomorrow.”
Note: everything worked out okay at the Sprint Store and the phone numbers were saved!
Story 3
This one would take forever to write out, so I’m going to give you the basics: It’s funny when you mix the double-boss, an old cell phone, some interesting ring-tones, and a well-timed hint.
The result is a sweating, heart-palpitating co-worker who was scared out of his mind. Although, I now wonder when the revenge will come.
The Cultural Obsession with Corporation-Hate
Every day I feel like I read another article despising the enormous profits of companies. And recently, most of these barbs have been directed at oil companies–who, according to the media, have been gouging customers while raking in enormous amounts of money. When the Chairman of Exxon was given a $400 million (approx.) retirement package, media outlets across the country went bizerk…at least for a little while. But I just don’t know why.
Exxon’s chairman was responsible for huge amounts of corporate growth; he directed the companywhile it created more wealth and gave the investors more wealth. Which brings me to the main point for this post/rant. Corporations are not large, evil institutions hell-bent on taking people’s money. Corporations are entities created by people and managed by people. Exxon’s wealth pays the salary for hundreds of thousands of people, plus it gives value to many people’s stock portfolio.
Of course, you say, stock is only owned by the rich. First, I have some stock, and I’m certainly not rich. Secondly, many pension funds in America own stock. That means your little granny has a vested interest in seeing the stock market go up; she has a vested interest in Exxon making money to keep her retirement account from going bust.
Corporations don’t hoard wealth–they share it with employees and stockholders. It’s an amazing process. If you want to know about an entity that hoards money, think of the Federal Government. But that’s another topic for another day.
Mainly, I think we need to shift our thinking away from seeing these corporations as evil. Sure, Enron and Worldcom were corrupt and terrible companies. But that’s two out of thousands. Let’s not forget that corporations are owned and run by people .
The Future of Television Commercials
I love to see it happening: commercials are slowly dying. Once I got my PVR, I stopped watching them for the most part. I’ll see a handful during a game, but other than that, my tv consumption is done in a time-shifted manner. Statistics show that most of America is following this trend, albeit not as quickly as I dove into it.
Within the past few months, TV networks have been scrambling to put their TV shows on the internet. ABC scored big by being the first, but not the others have joined the fun. For a couple bucks, you can download the entire show sans commercials. Or you can watch the show with the same commercials online, but I would suspect that more people download than endure the commercials.
I see this as the beginning of the end of traditional TV. For the first time ever, it’s feasible to buy only what you want to watch. I could reasonable buy a subscription to Lost and Scrubs and cancel my cable. I no longer have to pay for all of the crap that’s out there. And that’s wonderful.
But I started wondering how you could put advertising back into television unobtrusively. Think of it as commercial advertising in the style of Google adwords.
What if you could pause a tv show, and everything in that scene could be purchasable. You like the shirt, so you click on the shirt and it takes you to Amazon to buy it. Amazon already knows your size and has your credit card info, so all you have to do is click the remote a few times and you have it. Or maybe you see some Lays chips that you want to buy, you click on them and they are automatically added to your grocery list.
Like adwords, this would be perfect, because the consumer would be in charge of the situation. Advertisers would pay for product placement in shows and reap the rewards of one-click buying. And for the rest of us that don’t like commercials (and don’t feel like they hold a lot of sway over our buying habits), we could breeze through shows knowing that we don’t have to sit through 17 minutes of ads per 1 hour show.
I think it’s coming; I just wonder who will be the first to introduce it.
Apple Blows It
Check out this article: Miracle Reported: Apple Contemplates Policy Change.
The basic gist of the story is that a third grader sent a letter to Steve Jobs w/ some ideas for improving the iPod. She received an official letter from the legal department saying they don’t accept unsolicited ideas.
Genius! And this from a company that is so adored… I wonder how much press this would get if Microsoft did it?
Definitions
Definitions are an integral part of life. They provide and ability to communicate. Without them, the words I just wrote would be meaningless, because none would be defined. And if none were defined, what I wrote would mean something to me and nothing to anyone else, unless, of course, I shared my definitions with the world.
Noah Webster did an amazing thing for the English language–he took the words in existence and gave actual and reasonable definition to them. By doing this, he slowed the evolution of language and created a better environment to share ideas.
The same thing is true of measurements. Architects can design buildings that builders can build (awkward, huh?) because they all share a common system a measurement. If a foot is six inches long to some people and 12 inches long for others, what does it mean to anyone? Nothing.
This all reminds me of the importance of choosing your words wisely. If you define a word differently than everyone (or most everyone) else, then you should be extremely hesitant in using that word. If no one has any idea what that word means, or even worse, if they define it differently, you are putting yourself in a situation where people can misuse or fail to understand your comments. And that’s not a good deal.