Some arguments have no winners and shouldn't be arguments at all. Like vehemently asserting that Leonard Cohen is a better singer than Tom Waits, when we all know it's Bob Dylan who takes that cake.
I find it's good to lead off a blentry with a joke that 7 people worldwide understand and only I will think is funny. It's like I'm wrapping the reader in a warm hug and whispering, "I'm smarter and more cultured than you are and therefore clearly superior..." Who wouldn't think the world of that?
Well, I had one of those the other day. Not an argument, but a phone call from a professional subordinate, (I hate that word, but it's apt in this case, hence the descriptor and caveat "professional"), regarding why I made the decision I made.
"I understand", she said, time and time again. "I just don't understand why."
I admired the chutzpa and told her so. Eventually, I repeated myself in enough different ways that she understood. Or she relented and decided to cut and run. I never am sure which, since when it comes to arguing, I can go for miles.
I have been taking a number of personality inventories lately as part of my goal to find out how best to master each situation I am in by asserting myself without rolling over people. How can I tell you I'm not altogether happy with your results without making you feel like you are a failure as a person? These are good things to know.
One of them is a DISC assessment where each letter represents one broad personality style. No style is right or wrong and no one is completely in one section naturally, and everyone has some ability to adapt to a different style as needed, even if only temporarily.
My classification, of course, is the best one. Again, there are no "bad" classifications, but three of them are clearly subordinate (no caveats there, one might notice) to the one.
I am a mighty "D."
Here is what the assessment has to say about "Ds":
Direct, demanding, firm, ambitious, independent, communicative, outspoken, competitive, strong-willed and motivating.
All good things. The best things. I can't see why anyone would want to be anything else. What a blessing for me to be a "D".
It goes on to say:
"[He] is demanding and pushy and can be unyielding... He is not a very patient listener."
Well, this is just a dumb old test, after all. No one is perfect. Or even close. But "Ds" are sure close.
But, wait... I notice that up there where there are words that describe me in all my glorious near-perfection there is nothing about compassion. Or loving. Or, gasp, kind! I don't think I lack any of those things in my natural state! This test is all a load of hooey!
Which leads to my point, 14 paragraphs in - Take that English professors! There is such a thing as too much self-awareness. It can make your head spin and interject doubt into areas where before you had nothing but confidence.
Everything is shades of gray. There really are no rights and wrongs here, all hubris aside. The important thing from what I can tell in my 38 years of life is simple to state if not simple to do. Make every interaction you have with every person make them feel like a better person and happy to have spent the time with you, every time.
Wow. That is hard. It's especially harder for me the less I know someone. I had a long day yesterday. I have replaced multiple people over my time within my organization; I have those persons' phone numbers forwarded to me so as not to miss calls from valued customers, etc. More often than not, however I am receiving calls from friends, charities, bill collectors, elderly parents who possess neither the knowledge to remove an old number from their files nor the mental fortitude to remember which number is the current one, bill collectors, drug dealers and/or consumers, people leaving four minute voicemails in fluent, unceasing Italian and bill collectors.
I got nine rapid fire calls from a Kentucky number, the last finally culminating in a voicemail. "Hi, Bill, I'm looking for ___________. If you know how I can get a hold of him, will you please call me back at ___________."
Each time she called, she got my "Hi, this is Bill," voicemail. Did she think she misdialed exactly the same way each time eight times, finally on the ninth time coming to grips with the fact that repeating her behavior wasn't going to connect her to _____________ ?
I did not return the call. I'm a busy man, being a "D" and all. Flash forward to dinner time. That's right, after 13 hours, I gave up work for 45 minutes to have dinner and watch the Tigers game, which was a fustercluck of the highest order that bears not the dignity of further discussion. Wouldn't you know it, just as the pizza rolls and chicken strips were ready to come out of the oven, the phone rings.
It's Kentucky. I picked it up, mad. Acting mad. Sounding mad. Being mad. A sweet southern voice on the other end, a woman sounding about the age of my own dear, sainted mother, and not the same voice as the woman who left a message earlier, said, "Hi, with whom am I speaking?"
To which I responded in a loud voice which betrayed my anger, "Who is this, you called me?"
I was expecting a bill collector. Even though I am not in love with the memory of some of the people whose phones I now have, I am not a dirty person... no way am I going to be nice to a bill collector.
The nice, motherly, southern lady on the other end stammered something about calling to get a reference for someone who had applied for a job and was looking for _______________ and she said, (now through what I think may have been the quavering of tears), "I'm sorry to have bothered you."
I couldn't switch gears so fast. So I said I was sorry to be short, that I'd had a rough day, and I was annoyed by all the phone calls for someone else and... and... and. But I said it in the same nasty, staccato voice I answered with, which must have been humorous to watch, had it not been so heartbreakingly rude and sad.
And this in the midst of my goal to, how was it that I put it earlier? Oh yes, "Make every interaction you have with every person make them feel like a better person and happy to have spent the time with you, every time."
Maybe the old slogan for Virginia Slims cigarettes should have said "You've got a long way to go, baby." I know I do. I'm just sorry I had to remind myself of that at the expense of some matronly southern woman who innocently walked onto a green field only to step on a mine.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Tangled Up in Blue (and Maze)
By my nature, I was reluctant to go, because I don't like the stress of crowds and I didn't want to see one of those games where the big team beats up on the little team so mercilessly that you begin to feel embarrassed. But, when good friends asked if we'd like to have a day trip and go See U of M play Akron, we knew we would have a good time in spite of it all.
And it was a beautiful day. Traffic getting in to Ann Arbor was a non-issue. We sat on the roof deck of the parking garage in the morning sun having a nice tailgate smorgasbord and listening to '80's music.
The sea of humanity wearing maze and blue was truly a spectacle. Each and every one, filing in past parties in the houses on each side of the street marching toward their purpose. Beer pong. Beer drinking. Gorgeous co-eds with blessedly high self-confidence beaming. All moving steadily and surely toward "the Big House" like a wave of confidence.
That same wave of confidence makes me not a natural Michigan fan. It's too easy. Like rooting for the Yankees or Manchester United, or I don't know, the Red Wings.
With the exception of the Red Wings and the Tigers, I pretty much root for the underdog. It seems like I am drawn inexorably to the underdog. The scrappy fighters who seem to always lose. Except when they don't lose, which creates an unstoppable wellspring of positive energy that can last for days. When that slot pays off, it's almost seems worth the years of struggle and tenacity it took to get there. Never mind you lost your house and family in the process. You won!
When the big guys win, it's satisfying. Like a steak at Ruth's Chris, it had better be good. But if you had that same steak at Denny's, you'd talk about it for months.
Since U of M varitably killed my alma mater CMU 59-9 only two weeks hence, I didn't think the Akron Zips, a fellow MAC team to my Chippewas would fair well, either. Which would have been fine with me, as I bear no allegiance either way. It would be easy to "hail hail" half my heart through one game.
As we walked in, we were astride the huge and impressive U of M marching band. They form into ranks like a military caisson might have back in revolutionary war days. The drum line unceasingly vamping its long cadence while the band marches and chatters something about being awesome, only a few words of which I could understand. Most of those were, Michigan. Fight. Kill. Destroy. Victory... you know, football stuff.
It's a long walk into the stadium, but it was made short by the joviality of mood, the awesomeness of the band and the peculiarly gorgeous fall Michigan weather. Good seats. Good friends. Good weather. All was in place as I awaited the boring game in which we would leave somewhere in the third quarter because it would be over like eggs in a diner.
Not so, sayeth Akron who came to play. And they did play, delivering a true nail biter that had the over 100,000 fans in attendance on their feet. Many prayed. Some couldn't watch. You would expect noise, but the silence was deafening as the game literally came down to the last play. Time stood still and one could suddenly feel the theory of relativity in practice as the collective inhaling of massive humanity sucked the air out of the giant bowl and time-stood-still.
The roar of the crowd when the pass fell incomplete and Michigan had won the game was something of a magnitude my mere words couldn't possibly explain. If only out of bald entitlement, rather than any demonstrated talent, Michigan won. And I found myself hugging and high-fiving and shouting "yes!".
No, I am not especially a Michigan fan. I won't be after this game, either. But I sure did have a good time watching Akron bring it to them. And I enjoyed them hanging on, persevering and emerging victorious. I got the game I wanted to see. A game. A real, hard fought game replete with suspense, drama and unremitting concern over the outcome until the last second dripped away.
And I formed a respect for the Akron Zips who punched in a higher weight class and very nearly pulled off the upset. I hope their bus ride home was a good one because they had nothing be be ashamed of. They fought hard. They fought like I wish my Chippewas had just a couple weeks ago.
I knew we would have a good time. I knew we would be in good company. The local news media had assured me we would enjoy fair skies. What I didn't expect was how, by the end of the game, my half-hearted "hail, hail" became fully punctuated and forcefully issued "Hail!" "Hail!" as though somehow, I had actually come to mean it.
And it was a beautiful day. Traffic getting in to Ann Arbor was a non-issue. We sat on the roof deck of the parking garage in the morning sun having a nice tailgate smorgasbord and listening to '80's music.
The sea of humanity wearing maze and blue was truly a spectacle. Each and every one, filing in past parties in the houses on each side of the street marching toward their purpose. Beer pong. Beer drinking. Gorgeous co-eds with blessedly high self-confidence beaming. All moving steadily and surely toward "the Big House" like a wave of confidence.
That same wave of confidence makes me not a natural Michigan fan. It's too easy. Like rooting for the Yankees or Manchester United, or I don't know, the Red Wings.
With the exception of the Red Wings and the Tigers, I pretty much root for the underdog. It seems like I am drawn inexorably to the underdog. The scrappy fighters who seem to always lose. Except when they don't lose, which creates an unstoppable wellspring of positive energy that can last for days. When that slot pays off, it's almost seems worth the years of struggle and tenacity it took to get there. Never mind you lost your house and family in the process. You won!
When the big guys win, it's satisfying. Like a steak at Ruth's Chris, it had better be good. But if you had that same steak at Denny's, you'd talk about it for months.
Since U of M varitably killed my alma mater CMU 59-9 only two weeks hence, I didn't think the Akron Zips, a fellow MAC team to my Chippewas would fair well, either. Which would have been fine with me, as I bear no allegiance either way. It would be easy to "hail hail" half my heart through one game.
As we walked in, we were astride the huge and impressive U of M marching band. They form into ranks like a military caisson might have back in revolutionary war days. The drum line unceasingly vamping its long cadence while the band marches and chatters something about being awesome, only a few words of which I could understand. Most of those were, Michigan. Fight. Kill. Destroy. Victory... you know, football stuff.
It's a long walk into the stadium, but it was made short by the joviality of mood, the awesomeness of the band and the peculiarly gorgeous fall Michigan weather. Good seats. Good friends. Good weather. All was in place as I awaited the boring game in which we would leave somewhere in the third quarter because it would be over like eggs in a diner.
Not so, sayeth Akron who came to play. And they did play, delivering a true nail biter that had the over 100,000 fans in attendance on their feet. Many prayed. Some couldn't watch. You would expect noise, but the silence was deafening as the game literally came down to the last play. Time stood still and one could suddenly feel the theory of relativity in practice as the collective inhaling of massive humanity sucked the air out of the giant bowl and time-stood-still.
The roar of the crowd when the pass fell incomplete and Michigan had won the game was something of a magnitude my mere words couldn't possibly explain. If only out of bald entitlement, rather than any demonstrated talent, Michigan won. And I found myself hugging and high-fiving and shouting "yes!".
No, I am not especially a Michigan fan. I won't be after this game, either. But I sure did have a good time watching Akron bring it to them. And I enjoyed them hanging on, persevering and emerging victorious. I got the game I wanted to see. A game. A real, hard fought game replete with suspense, drama and unremitting concern over the outcome until the last second dripped away.
And I formed a respect for the Akron Zips who punched in a higher weight class and very nearly pulled off the upset. I hope their bus ride home was a good one because they had nothing be be ashamed of. They fought hard. They fought like I wish my Chippewas had just a couple weeks ago.
I knew we would have a good time. I knew we would be in good company. The local news media had assured me we would enjoy fair skies. What I didn't expect was how, by the end of the game, my half-hearted "hail, hail" became fully punctuated and forcefully issued "Hail!" "Hail!" as though somehow, I had actually come to mean it.
Friday, September 13, 2013
...The Final Frontier
I read just now that the spacecraft Voyager has broken through the heliosphere of our Milky Way, the galaxy, not the candy bar and is in interstellar space. I doubt most of us have any comprehension of the magnitude of this fact, even if intellectually we understand what the term interstellar space represents.
Our galaxy is a pinwheel shaped affair. It is not especially large by galactic measure, it is indeed pretty average, but for the fact that humanity in its total exists there. This fact, depending on whom you ask may very well make our galaxy below average. But, I digress.
We are located well out of center of the mass. It's easier to see a picture, so thanks to Ecology Global Network (www.ecology.com), I have one.
Voyager embarked in 1977. It has been out there for 36 years, traipsing our solar system from Earth, out past the planets and is quietly beeping away to no one and nothing in particular in the vast blackness of space.
I remind you, this is not the space we see from our night sky. This is not the deep black between the stars of Orion's belt, or the void that is being scooped by the dippers.
This is the void of space. This is space between galaxies. This is the space between space.
The nearest galaxy to where Voyager is now is 2.5 million light years. Imagine that next time you have to park in the last row at Wal*Mart. Voyager is 1.25 million light years away from the middle of nowhere. The sign warning of last gas was billions of miles and 36 years ago.
To further enhance your understanding of the scope of distance, or your to make your mind explode, a light year is the distance you travel in one Earth year if you are traveling at the speed of light. Voyager is not traveling at the speed of light. Voyager is traveling at a little over 38,000 mph. Not bad! That would cut down the old commute for sure. The speed of light, however is 670,616,619 mph, or thereabouts, meaning Voyager is traveling at .00005666436742 % of the speed of light. In other words,Voyager is the Prius of interstellar space travel. Built for distance, not speed.
How does NASA know where Voyager is? Well the sensors aboard the craft that measure plasma density broke 30 years ago. Of course they did. My plasma density sensor was barely out of the box when it broke. That was a bad Christmas morning, but I digress. And since there are no warranty centers out there in the universe, Voyager forged ahead without them.
But, the men and women of NASA and JPL, (the jet propulsion laboratory), don't let a little thing like total failure of a component to stop them. Anyone remember when they had to train those guys from Lenscrafters to be astronauts and go fix the Hubble telescope? What they did was time Voyager's distance from two known cosmic events. These events, in the form of solar flares, made an impact that could be quantitatively sensed from Voyager. Based on the time we know they happened and the time they hit Voyager, we have an approximate dead reckoning of where she was. Also, there was a shock to the craft that NASA presumed (rightly it turns out), was the zone where the solar wind became subsonic, out to the fringe of the galaxy.
This was all back in August of 2012 and NASA guessed Voyager had broken through. But, that wasn't good enough. This is NASA after all, and "guessing" isn't so much in the vocabulary, though they are prone to rounding errors, (see Hubble reference). In fact, they may be the only governmental organization that can actually look you square in the face when they tell you something without snickering... I know, digressing.
So, how then did they determine that Voyager was no longer in our galaxy? There are antennae that vibrate at a certain frequency due to the density of plasma that the craft travels through. They measured the vibrations of the antennae and voila no vibration = no plasma. "Straightforward" one NASA scientist said while he cooly realized he was the smartest man ever.
Conclusive was the evidence. Voyager is out in the infinite of infinites.
An unfathomable distance from here on this planet, is a spacecraft that weight about as much as a 1977 Volkswagen Rabbit and could fit in a 12' X 12' box, excluding those vibrating antennae. It silently swoops through the vacuum of space off to its destiny, forgotten or never known by many. All the while it maintains something akin to wide-eyed wonder, reporting back all it can capture using all its sensors.
It does not know that it left behind genocide, war, hatred, greed, the corporate rape of people and riches, scarring of the land, the last episode of The Sopranos and whatever other cataclysm wrought by humanity tugs are your particular heartstrings.
Nietzsche said that God is dead, murdered at the hand of humanity. If I had to learn to spell his name before graduating kindergarten I might have a negative outlook on life, too. But here we are, with our foibles and shortfalls, still quietly endeavoring to not just solve the mystery of our place in this universe, but to learn what the mystery even is.
The whole thing reminds me of Star Trek. And why wouldn't it? According to Wikipedia, the bastion of truthiness and unassailable know-it-all of the interweb, the plot of Star Trek, the Motion Picture (1979) is as follows (with some additions by the author):
In other words, "Holy Sh*t, that Sh*t is coming true." Which may mean that someday soon, man is no longer cruel to man. Like Star Trek. And that man has united to overcome the greatest shortcomings of humanity and attained a higher level of being. Like Star Trek. And that anyone can sleep with a totally hot bald alien lady if he wants to. Like Star Trek! And that fat people in the future will be accepted for their bodies and wear lycra onesies as proof of their self-confidence. Like Star Trek!
I said to Emily at dinner the other night, "I think I'm glad I won't be around for 'the future'. I don' think I'd like it." Knowing that our future has been unquestionably foretold by a movie produced in the same time period as Voyager itself, which as I write is probably now meeting up with the alien machines and learning all it needs to know becoming compelled to come home to daddy, pissed off and disillusioned and ready to hurl blue balls of energy destroying anything in its path, is enough to make me want to try to stick around.
Beside that, I rather like the feel of lycra on my body.
Our galaxy is a pinwheel shaped affair. It is not especially large by galactic measure, it is indeed pretty average, but for the fact that humanity in its total exists there. This fact, depending on whom you ask may very well make our galaxy below average. But, I digress.
We are located well out of center of the mass. It's easier to see a picture, so thanks to Ecology Global Network (www.ecology.com), I have one.
Voyager embarked in 1977. It has been out there for 36 years, traipsing our solar system from Earth, out past the planets and is quietly beeping away to no one and nothing in particular in the vast blackness of space.
I remind you, this is not the space we see from our night sky. This is not the deep black between the stars of Orion's belt, or the void that is being scooped by the dippers.
This is the void of space. This is space between galaxies. This is the space between space.
The nearest galaxy to where Voyager is now is 2.5 million light years. Imagine that next time you have to park in the last row at Wal*Mart. Voyager is 1.25 million light years away from the middle of nowhere. The sign warning of last gas was billions of miles and 36 years ago.
To further enhance your understanding of the scope of distance, or your to make your mind explode, a light year is the distance you travel in one Earth year if you are traveling at the speed of light. Voyager is not traveling at the speed of light. Voyager is traveling at a little over 38,000 mph. Not bad! That would cut down the old commute for sure. The speed of light, however is 670,616,619 mph, or thereabouts, meaning Voyager is traveling at .00005666436742 % of the speed of light. In other words,Voyager is the Prius of interstellar space travel. Built for distance, not speed.
How does NASA know where Voyager is? Well the sensors aboard the craft that measure plasma density broke 30 years ago. Of course they did. My plasma density sensor was barely out of the box when it broke. That was a bad Christmas morning, but I digress. And since there are no warranty centers out there in the universe, Voyager forged ahead without them.
But, the men and women of NASA and JPL, (the jet propulsion laboratory), don't let a little thing like total failure of a component to stop them. Anyone remember when they had to train those guys from Lenscrafters to be astronauts and go fix the Hubble telescope? What they did was time Voyager's distance from two known cosmic events. These events, in the form of solar flares, made an impact that could be quantitatively sensed from Voyager. Based on the time we know they happened and the time they hit Voyager, we have an approximate dead reckoning of where she was. Also, there was a shock to the craft that NASA presumed (rightly it turns out), was the zone where the solar wind became subsonic, out to the fringe of the galaxy.
This was all back in August of 2012 and NASA guessed Voyager had broken through. But, that wasn't good enough. This is NASA after all, and "guessing" isn't so much in the vocabulary, though they are prone to rounding errors, (see Hubble reference). In fact, they may be the only governmental organization that can actually look you square in the face when they tell you something without snickering... I know, digressing.
So, how then did they determine that Voyager was no longer in our galaxy? There are antennae that vibrate at a certain frequency due to the density of plasma that the craft travels through. They measured the vibrations of the antennae and voila no vibration = no plasma. "Straightforward" one NASA scientist said while he cooly realized he was the smartest man ever.
Conclusive was the evidence. Voyager is out in the infinite of infinites.
An unfathomable distance from here on this planet, is a spacecraft that weight about as much as a 1977 Volkswagen Rabbit and could fit in a 12' X 12' box, excluding those vibrating antennae. It silently swoops through the vacuum of space off to its destiny, forgotten or never known by many. All the while it maintains something akin to wide-eyed wonder, reporting back all it can capture using all its sensors.
It does not know that it left behind genocide, war, hatred, greed, the corporate rape of people and riches, scarring of the land, the last episode of The Sopranos and whatever other cataclysm wrought by humanity tugs are your particular heartstrings.
Nietzsche said that God is dead, murdered at the hand of humanity. If I had to learn to spell his name before graduating kindergarten I might have a negative outlook on life, too. But here we are, with our foibles and shortfalls, still quietly endeavoring to not just solve the mystery of our place in this universe, but to learn what the mystery even is.
The whole thing reminds me of Star Trek. And why wouldn't it? According to Wikipedia, the bastion of truthiness and unassailable know-it-all of the interweb, the plot of Star Trek, the Motion Picture (1979) is as follows (with some additions by the author):
...At
the heart of the massive invading ship, V'Ger is revealed to be Voyager 6, a
20th-century Earth space probe believed lost, like Cubs fans hopes of winning a
pennant. The damaged probe was found by an alien race of living machines that
interpreted its programming as instructions to learn all that can be learned,
and return that information to its creator who would store the information
somewhere in his attic and get to it after Breaking Bad ends. The machines
upgraded the probe to fulfill its mission, and on its journey the probe
gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness... it finds its
existence empty and without purpose, like every fast food worker, ever.
...V'Ger insists to meet the Creator in person, which is akin to a human
screaming 'why God, why?' and expecting an answer. The machine wants to merge
with its creator, because, you know, the writers needed and ending. Decker
[played by the Dad from Seventh Heaven] offers himself to V'Ger... creating a
new form of life that disappears into another dimension, because you know, the
writers needed an ending.
In other words, "Holy Sh*t, that Sh*t is coming true." Which may mean that someday soon, man is no longer cruel to man. Like Star Trek. And that man has united to overcome the greatest shortcomings of humanity and attained a higher level of being. Like Star Trek. And that anyone can sleep with a totally hot bald alien lady if he wants to. Like Star Trek! And that fat people in the future will be accepted for their bodies and wear lycra onesies as proof of their self-confidence. Like Star Trek!
I said to Emily at dinner the other night, "I think I'm glad I won't be around for 'the future'. I don' think I'd like it." Knowing that our future has been unquestionably foretold by a movie produced in the same time period as Voyager itself, which as I write is probably now meeting up with the alien machines and learning all it needs to know becoming compelled to come home to daddy, pissed off and disillusioned and ready to hurl blue balls of energy destroying anything in its path, is enough to make me want to try to stick around.
Beside that, I rather like the feel of lycra on my body.
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