Today was a day that in all respects was a Monday. I tried to synergize an efficient convergence of two activities, by leveraging a front-end initiative. It soon morphed bleeding-edge and I was left out-of-the-box. The sticky mindshare of my infomediaries repurposed my value-added content. Vertical platforms, viral portals and virtual relationships had to be recontextualized. My plan to orchestrate next-generation vortals failed. What the heck is a vortal anyway? A robot contributed to this post, namely the Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
When I got back from Atlanta last night, the annual block party was underway. Anne had made fruit salad and she and many of the neighbors were congregated down the block from our house. I got out of my meeting a little early and made it to the airport in time to catch an earlier flight. There were a fair number of military personnel on the flight, all new inductees, all headed to Fort Leonard Wood, in mid-Missouri. After I was seated, one of the flight attendants came back and asked the group of them, who was the leader. At first, she didn’t say why she wanted to know and was having some trouble getting an answer. Then she explained that a nice gentleman in first class had offered to exchange his seat with the leader of this group. She soon had an army of leaders on her hands.
My fifteen minutes of fame occurred first thing in the morning. I was the first speaker, after our hosts had given their introductory remarks. I got up and walked from the back of the room and began my briefing. I promptly fell flat on my face. Even though I had given variations of this same spiel a dozen times, I found myself tongue-tied. I soon retreated to complete reliance upon the filler vocalization, “ah”. For example, “In his slide, ah, you can see, ah …” I considered changing my nationality to Canadian, so that I could substitute “ay” for ah and thereby pass off my use of fillers as simply another English speaker’s regional accent. I rushed through the pitch at such a rate that I was finished in only ten minutes. Afterwards, many people told me that I had done a good job, including my management and also the customer, but I knew better. By the end of the day, it didn’t really matter though, because my silver-tongued compatriots had wooed the audience so successfully that a rising tide floated all boats, even mine.
Later, after the block party, this thought occurred to me, I need a teleprompter. Yesterday’s it was a standup talk. I faced the audience and could only surreptitiously look at the slides. The dozen times that I had previously given this pitch were less formal events. For these, I just flipped through the slides, while sitting at the PC in the back of the room. While flipping the slides, I could also read them and more easily speak to them. In these settings, I felt more comfortable and spoke more naturally. President Obama is often criticized as the teleprompter president. After yesterday’s epiphany, I see no reason why anyone should denigrate him for the use of this technology. It is no more a crutch than the reading glasses that Winston Churchill used, when he broadcasted his famous World War II speeches and Churchill is rightly regarded as one of the greatest English speakers.
In the movie, “The King’s Speech”, the actor, Geoffrey Rush’s character employ’s a myriad of artifices and techniques to teach Colin Firth, ah, King George VI, how to talk pretty now. We have created a multitude of technological aids to communication. They should not just be reserved for the most eloquent among us. If I need a crutch then I should be able to use it. After all, we are no longer 19th century barrister orators, speaking extemporaneously. If what I have to say is deemed important enough to be heard, then I should be afforded the tools to do the job. When this is done, then the last thing we would have to do is kill all the lawyers.
I took a sick day on Tuesday, in order to visit the doctor. Don’t worry, they were routine appointments, and everything was fine. When I first started working at a job that offered paid sick leave, lo these many years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. Back then, sick leave was supposed to be for when you were sick and for nothing else. It especially wasn’t for caring for sick children, but that was then and this is now. Thanks to the Family and Medical Leave Act, and a change in company policy, I can use sick leave for my time at the doctor.
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with sick leave. I’ve been blessed with good health. I rarely get a cold and since I have regularly been getting the flu shot, I haven’t gotten the flu for many years. So I have been banking a lot of sick leave. Banking I say, but not really saving. Company policy encourages the use of sick leave, because otherwise you lose it. I accrue much more sick leave in a year, than I use. At the end of the year only half of the year’s balance is rolled over. I’m not complaining (even though it sounds like I am), because paid sick leave is great to have when you need it. OK, I am complaining, because the system I work with encourages abuse. Some people use their sick leave as extra vacation, this isn’t right, but still it is done.
A previous employer solved this dilemma by combining vacation and sick time into one pot, called personal days off. This combination only added five of the original ten sick days to personal day off pot, so there was some grumbling about that, but it was mainly from people who were abusing the sick leave policy. With this new policy the stigma of being out sick disappeared.
In other news, Dave contacted Drexel and scheduled a campus visit for next week. He will meet some of the faculty and hopes to get a better idea of what he would do there. In a related topic, I spoke with my Father on Monday and when I mentioned that Dave had been accepted at Drexel, he told me that he had also been accepted into Drexel’s biomedical engineering program. It was 1970 then, we were living just outside of DC and my Dad was retiring from the Navy. He had won an NIH doctoral fellowship and was shopping around for a school. Since, he would come already fully funded, Drexel was all over him to come there, but he chose Michigan instead and the rest, as they say, is history.
Chris and his camera are back on the job. The big software project that he has been working hard on finally launched. This photo shows a mural of two boatmen on an old seawall along Cannery Row, in Monterey, CA.
Thursday was a good day for the Boeing Company, a very good day. In addition to winning the long sought and much publicized tanker deal, it also successfully launched the space shuttle Discovery on its final mission to the International Space Station. Boeing is the prime contractor for both the shuttle and the space station. Finally, the delayed 787 program reached the 1,000th flight milestone in its flight-testing program. Together these three news items strike a most positive note and is why Boeing’s stock was up on Thursday, even though the rest of the market was down again.
EADS, the parent to Airbus has ten days to file a protest to this tanker contract award. If recent Pentagon acquisitions are any indication then an EADS protest is likely. One can only hope that after so much practice, the Air Force has finally gotten its act together this time around, after all the third time is a charm.
The Eisenhower era airplanes that the Air Force wants to replace are over fifty years old. One of my co-workers flies them for the Guard. When asked what they were like, he didn’t describe how they flew, or what they looked like, but how they smelled.
While the House Republicans were grabbing all of the headlines with their slashing of the budget, the Senate was acting with the utmost of decorum. The Senate passed the Aviation Jobs Bill, before the Presidents Day holiday. This bill was passed 87-8. How’s that for bipartisanship? This bill authorizes $35B and is supposed to generate 280,000 jobs. Frankly, this is a better return on jobs investment than the tanker deal. Really though, what this bill is about is a revamping of the air-traffic control system. It is almost as old as those aged tankers and its replacement has been almost as plagued as the tanker deal. The envisioned system will allow airplanes to fly from Detroit to Saint Louis in a straight line, well actually a great circle, but who’s counting. No more need to fly through Indianapolis or Chicago and I am speaking of direct flights. This will save the airlines time, gas and money.
Just like here, it is raining in Monterey, so there are no pictures from Chris. Is everyone celebrating with Seattle, by channeling their weather? Dave is at Purdue. Speaking of Dave, Anne is wondering what he is really doing at NIH. She has started to work on taxes. Instead of earning a salary, he has been earning a “taxable energy grant”, whatever that means. Maybe he is training his mindless mice to generate electricity on their little exercise wheels?
I’ve always loved airplanes and unlike most guys, only felt lukewarm love towards cars. A day like today makes my heart soar. I think that in light of today’s news, I’ll take the rest of the night off and celebrate some! Just a little though, because Friday is another workday, don’t you know.
Wednesday morning, just in time for the morning rush-hour a freezing rain hit Saint Louis. My first indication of trouble was the morning traffic reports. I had a 7:30 meeting, so I was up and moving earlier than usual. There were accidents reported, but none along my commuting route, so I didn’t give it too much thought. Later another traffic report spoke of many more accidents, including a 30+ car pileup downtown. Responding emergency vehicles only contributed to the crash totals. Stepping gingerly out of the door, I found only wet pavement. The only ice that I found was scraped off of my car windows.
In between the time that I left the house, stopped at Starbucks and headed towards the highway, I heard more accident reports. The first one reported two blocked lanes at Olive. I decided to head north on Hanley to get around the backup, but by the time I was far enough north to get back onto the highway a second accident at the Rock Road had the highway completely blocked.
So, I stuck with Hanley Road all the way to work. The only overpass that I had to cross and it was only on the overpasses that the ice had formed was where Hanley crossed I-70. There I found two cop cars, cherry lights flashing, sitting out in the middle of the overpass. They just sat there to ensure no one tried to do anything stupid and I didn’t. I made it to work safely as did Anne. I never even felt any ice while driving.
This is National Engineers Week. I started working as an engineer over thirty years ago at Chrysler’s proving grounds in Chelsea, MI. I didn’t like that job much and my work performance soon showed that, but one task that I did enjoy was helping to set up an automated test stand to calibrate the accelerometers inside of crash test dummies. Accelerometers are the instruments that measure the impacts that crash test dummies endure during simulated car crashes.
The test stand was pretty simple, drop a disembodied dummy’s head 10” onto a steel plate and measure the accelerometer’s response. You could try this at home by hanging upside-down and then releasing yourself onto a hard surface, but I would not recommend it. It would really hurt a lot.
Later in the day, I came upon two other engineers and in a riff off of the morning’s commute they were watching the following video. Produced by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, it commemorates the advancements in car safety in the last fifty years. This YouTube video shows two cars, a 2009 Chevy Malibu and a beautiful mint condition 1959 Chevy Bel Air colliding in a near head on collision. The results are dramatic and also surprising. One might think that the bigger, heavier and Steel Bel Air would fare better than its smaller, lighter and Plastic opponent. You would be wrong.
You would be just as wrong as my back-ass former Chrysler managers were. These very same managers bellyached about needless government regulation and complained that it was ruining the auto industry. I knew that they were wrong then and I did not want to work for them. This video shows that they were wrong and that government requirements can effect a positive change. Any Insurance Institute is unlikely to back needless government regulation. I just mention this, because sometimes positive change is hard to recognize.
Thirty years of engineering has taught me two things: 1) anything is correct if it is argued well; 2) in the end the truth do tell. Engineering is a collaborative endeavor. When engineers work together technical disputes are mostly settled with logic and data, but not always. Engineers are people too and sometimes emotions carry the day in an argument. Over time facts will eventually dictate who is right, but that may not matter much to who is left.
I don’t mean to sound so negative about work and engineering. Things are actually going pretty well these days. Today, I got to attend a 30-year anniversary luncheon for my walking buddy, Barbara. We went to Hendel’s Market in Florissant. Barb’s and my old boss, Denny, appeared there too.
Anne worked a split shift on Monday. In the morning she was the substitute nurse at the elementary school. This was a novel assignment for her. I’m not a real doctor nurse, but I play one at school. Her duties included handing out ice packs and Band-Aids to the mortally wounded. She also prepared needles for a diabetic student, rubber gloves and everything. Later, she underwent Election Judge training for April’s election.
Barbara, my walking buddy at work has deserted me this week. She and Steve have flown off to Cancun. I could have tried the ploy that the security officer attempted, but since it didn’t work for him, I didn’t think that I stood much of a chance: “Barbara, you were supposed to give us thirty-day notice of your foreign travel.” “I didn’t know that I was going until last week.” “Well, the only way that I can let you go, is if you take me too.”
Monday night, Valentine’s night, date night, Anne and I went out to dinner at Frank Papa’s in Brentwood. We have dined there twice before, once on a regular dinner date and once on another Valentine’s Day date. Both times were lovely dinners. Once we tried to get in there on a Valentine’s night without a reservation, but were shutout. We ended up going to Nachos Mama on Manchester, which is also a nice restaurant, but not particularly romantic. Especially since some of Anne’s students were there too.
Frank Papa’s runs a special Valentine’s Day menu and this is what we had:
Anne
Calamari Fritti – Thin, tender squid flash fried to a golden brown
Papa’s house salad
Grilled salmon served with capers and dill butter
Mark
Escarole – Crisp flash fried greens topped with grated parmigiana cheese, finished with a squeeze of lemon, a house specialty.
Tomato bisque
Filleto Monte Carlo grilled tenderloin with a portabella brandy cream sauce
Anne’s calamari allowed us to reminisce about a meal at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. We were there with the boyz and they were still young. It had been a long day and we were all tired and hungry. We found a place that served seafood, chicken strips and hamburgers. Even though the boyz got what they wanted, they were still acting like whiney pests. Anne’s solution was to order calamari and play see food. At times she looked like a cross between Peter Ustinov in the Blue Lagoon or something out of one of the Alien’s movies. Whatever, the boyz were suitably grossed-out into submission. [I look forward to see how that last sentence translates.] Such is what passes as romantic dinner conversation, between an old married couple. I hope that you had a happy Valentine’s Day. I know that we did.
The slideshow photos with this post are all Anne’s. They are from her trip to the Gardens on Sunday. I plucked them from her camera roll; consequently they only cover the orchid show. There will be more to come.
A muse amuses musically, this is what my muse spoke to me when I invoked her prophetic powers with this question, “What should I blog about today?” “A muse amuses musically, what does that mean? I don’t understand”, I tooted. “Be quiet now and I will explain what it means”, she trumpeted.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!
One of the classes that Anne participated in on Monday was band. In this class the music teacher was employing a study aide called SmartMusic. This software tool helps students with their practice. It let’s them see how well they are doing; by showing them how well each note was played. It also helps them hear how well they are doing, by playing back what they have played. It also monitors home practice sessions for playback by the teacher.
Big Brother is watching! – George Orwell, 1984
It was this last feature that was used to draw out the object of this day’s lesson. Students were chosen seemingly at random, at least at first, to perform the assignment, The Russian Sailor’s Dance. After a while it became clear that three notes was the best that this chosen lot could do. A little haranguing ensued.
What starts with a P and ends with ice? Pterodactyl lice!
After the dose of vinegar out came the sugar. The music teacher explained different ways to practice: play each note twice or start from the end and then build from the back. After just five minutes of these exercises there was already a noticeable improvement in the band’s sound. More importantly, the need to practice at home or the consequences from not, were driven home.
A little musicality, please! – from Strictly Ballroom
The final lesson the music teacher had to give his students was derived from the Super Bowl. Singer Christina Aguilera flubbed a line in the National Anthem and the Black Eyed Peas’ music in the halftime show was lackluster. “Those people are entertainers, not musicians. They don’t have to play well to be successful. You students are musicians; you must play well to be successful in this class.”
The bell rang!
Being a public school teacher is a tough job. Being a teacher of the arts in public school is double-down tough, first to be cut, last to be appreciated. Anne and I salute her colleagues for the great work that they do. They hold the future of America in their hands, until three o’clock, and then it is up to the rest of us.
When I got back from Atlanta last night, the annual block party was underway. Anne had made fruit salad and she and many of the neighbors were congregated down the block from our house. I got out of my meeting a little early and made it to the airport in time to catch an earlier flight. There were a fair number of military personnel on the flight, all new inductees, all headed to Fort Leonard Wood, in mid-Missouri. After I was seated, one of the flight attendants came back and asked the group of them, who was the leader. At first, she didn’t say why she wanted to know and was having some trouble getting an answer. Then she explained that a nice gentleman in first class had offered to exchange his seat with the leader of this group. She soon had an army of leaders on her hands.
