General Humor

I occasionally get a moment in which I can think straight enough to make a few observations about life, work, and other miscellany.

For example…

• I do not consider a peach shirt with an indigo bowtie to be professional dress (especially sans jacket), since I don’t consider clowning a profession.  Why is this oddly-dressed gentleman considered qualified to judge whether we’re running a school in a professional manner?
• If I hear one of the football coaches commenting on the cheerleading coach’s bootimus maximus, does that count as Pig Latin?
• Why have three different guys of Far Eastern origin, working at three separate Dairy Queen drive-thrus, commented on how nice my Honda Element looks?  I mean, they’re right, but that particular demographic seems to include my car’s biggest fans.
• How can there be a Lego Rock Band video game when there is no minifig-sized Lego guitar accessory?  Will Lego soon be producing such accessories?
• If retro clothing is such a big thing with every generation, how come the dirndl never made a comeback?
• Before that Central Office employee sent out an angry email denying the huge raise she allegedly received last year, why didn’t she check the public records to see whether her jump from $65,000 in Financial Year 2007 to $89,000 in FY08 might be viewable by pretty much anyone connected to the Internet?  (By the way… it is.)
• How can people justify charging $500 for an improve-your-blog’s-readership course that consists mostly of a two-word message:  “Use Twitter”?
• Will you pay me $500 if I tell you to use Twitter to promote your blog?
• Who has time for Twitter anyway?  Instead of spending hours of your time making flimsy and shallow “connections” with people in 140 characters or less, why not go out and find gainful employment?  The pay is better, and you’ll actually get to know someone.
• If I disappeared right now, everyone I call a friend would join in the search or otherwise assist law enforcement… and they wouldn’t let the search end until I’d been found.
• If Mr. I’m On Twitter disappeared right now, everyone he calls a follower would check Google in a week or two to see if he’s shown up on some other “social media” website… and then they’d forget about him.
• A man with one friend is more fortunate than a man with 1,000 followers.

And most importantly…

• Why did my SAM Infantry units (with bazookas!) on Civilization IV just get trounced by musket-wielding British Redcoats?

One of my oldest, strongest addictions is taking me apart again, brick by brick.

 I could spend time blaming my suppliers and enablers… but I know that really, I am to blame.  It’s my problem, my issue, and no one can take the responsibility away from me.

And now, because of this addiction, I am going to commit the cardinal sin about which I have been warned… against which I have been cautioned… despite all the reasons why I shouldn’t.

To satisfy my born-again need for all things Lego, I will be starting a second blog.  (Ahh, Lego bricks… even better than colored duct tape…)

(It’s awful, I know.)

I know all the reasons why a second blog is a horrible idea.  I know it will provide yet another demand on my already thinly-stretched time.  I know that I’ve only recently returned to this blog after a few weeks of ignoring it (and you, my loyal readers… yes, all three of you).

I’m doing it anyway, and this time I’m going whole-blog — er, “hog”… dabbling in SEO, networking, and similar time-consuming ways of getting “biggified.”  Only, since it’s Lego, it’s more like “Duplofied.”

I’m even going to monetize (somehow… still working on the details) to benefit (hopefully) from the social media marketing I’ll be doing.  I don’t actually expect to earn much… the income will more likely be “minifigures” than “six figures”… but you never know.  If I do make some money, I could use it to buy my wife a nice gift… like some of the classic Paradisa sets she keeps talking about.

Just to make absolutely certain that my last shred of integrity is thrown to the wind, I’m even going to write an occasional post here promoting my new Lego blog.  In fact, I just did.

I know.  Put that way, it makes me want to say horrible, nasty things about myself.

PLEASE don’t give up on me!  I can change!  I can return to the old devil-may-care, keywords-aren’t-important, who-needs-money-anyway Aylad you all know and love!  I can!  I can!  I…

…will keep you informed of the details as things progress.  (C’mon, it’s not like I’ll actually make any money off of it anyway.  People won’t leggo of their cash just because I ask nicely.  Also, does this post, in combination with the one about getting rich quick, make me seem like even more of a hypocrite?  Yes?  Cool…)

I’ll also let you know if I come up with any more horrible Lego puns like the four above…

Taking a page from both Deep Friar and the WILF challenge, I decided to share some of the facts about life which one may gain from playing video games.

• The human body can be shot, hacked, burned, frozen, and otherwise mutilated, yet it will be healed completely by a good night’s sleep.
• Being seriously injured doesn’t limit your ability to run, jump, and fight, but it may cause a brief reddish haze to flash across your vision.
• Poison won’t hurt you if you don’t move until the poison wears off.
• Eating bread is better than a good night’s sleep, since it has the same effect but only takes a tenth of a second to accomplish.
• Removing internal organs from an animal you’ve killed is as simple as pulling a clean pair of socks from a drawer.
• That twelve-foot sword you just used to kill a giant rat will fit neatly in your pocket right next to your double-bladed axe, spare set of full-body plate armor, the anvil your neighbor wants you to take to his business partner, and enough gold to overflow Fort Knox.
• Fires don’t require firewood, torches rarely burn out, and no one needs to pay the electric or water bill.
• Nobody goes poo.
• Long falls only hurt you if they happen because you’re careless.  If you fall because of circumstances beyond your control, you will merely be knocked unconscious for a short period of time (during which you are likely to heal fully, as after a good night’s sleep).
• Young, fragile, naïve girls are usually able to magically summon and control beasts that would make the Devil shiver in his boots, if he wore boots.
• Extraordinarily valuable items are left in unlocked, unguarded chests scattered randomly around any villain’s hideout.
• Villains always have elaborate hideouts.
• The key to defeating any villain may be found within his hideout.
• Maps always have a blinking “you are here” dot… no matter where you are.
• Especially tense moments always trigger flashbacks of incredibly important events in your life that you’ve never remembered before.
• Dreams come true, but only if they feature a god, ghost, or demon trying to tell you something.
• Store owners are always as willing to buy your old, used junk as they are to sell you new, top-quality merchandise.
• Whenever things don’t look so good… don’t worry, the sequel’s graphics will be much improved.
• If at first you don’t succeed, check GameFaqs.
• The last of anything is the most powerful of its kind that has ever lived… but, unless it is evil, it needs your help to continue surviving.
• The “reset” button solves everything.
• If the reset button fails to solve something, that’s ok… there’s a cheat code.  You cheater.

You know, I don’t think this post has a point.  Hmm.

*reset* … *reset*reset*reset*

… (Dang!)

As a general rule, I don’t like people who think they can “get rich quick.”  They annoy me.  This includes people who claim that they’ll be millionaires before their thirtieth birthday.  They generally claim that this isn’t a get-rich-quick mindset, since 30 years of age won’t come for, like, six months or more… but they still have that… je ne sais quois… that bloody cockiness in their stride that says “who needs a career?  I have a glib tongue and a plan, baby, a plan.”

Remember that fellow from the Beetle Baily comic strips?  Cosmo was his name.  Wikipedia describes him as “Camp Swampy’s sunglass-wearing resident ‘shady entrepreneur.’”

Yeah.

So this, of course, makes me a total hypocrite when I come up with a new plan (yeah, baby, a plan) for a business venture that is 100% guaranteed to earn fat profits.

Even though I only come up with good plans.

Until I realize the fatal flaw (which usually is the fact that expenses would far outweigh any possible income from the venture).

Like a few weeks ago, I had (in a brilliant flash of insight) an idea that enabled me to stop spam from being posted to this blog.

I had been getting at least a dozen spammed comments per day (pathetically low, I guess, compared to most blogs, but enough to seriously frustrate me).

I implemented my new anti-spam idea.

In the three or four weeks since, I’ve had about three spam messages posted.

Three.  When it should have been three hundred.

I thought I’d found the perfect product… a nearly 100% effective spam blocker (I don’t mean a spam filter, like Akismet… I mean a spam blocker, where the software never even sees the spam).

I was going to make thousands.  Hundreds of thousands.  Millions.

Until I realized that a WordPress plugin for this would effectively be open source (the code would be easily viewable by anyone who wanted to install the same blocker without paying me) and I’m not sure that any value would be added by any related services I could offer.

So unless someone wants to pay me to install a few lines of code in their WordPress theme…

$5,000,000?  $50,000?  $5?  (*psst… it works on other applications too, like forums and such!*)

…I guess it’s back to finding the venture capital for that Spanish-language movie theater I want to open in a local Hispanic-immigrant neighborhood.

(I’ll be rich!)

I have this one student who is a constant thorn in my side.  Every day it’s the same story… he refuses to do work; he talks constantly, even calling out across the room to annoy his classmates; and he doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he’s failing miserably.

I try to deal with this misbehavior, of course.  I fuss at him.  I yell at him.  I threaten to send him to the principal for disrupting his classmates (which usually does stop him from calling out).  I send letters home (after trying and failing to reach his parents by phone) letting them know that he will not receive credit for my class unless he shapes up.

It doesn’t matter.  Three things are always certain:

He will not do his work.

He will continue talking.

He won’t act even slightly resentful toward me.

It bothers me.  It gnaws at me.  Most troublesome students have the decency to get irritated with me from time to time.  They usually act like I’m interfering with their lives when I fuss or yell at them.  Practically all of them at least give me the cold shoulder and a quiet sneer when I crack down on their misdeeds.

Not this one.

He just shrugs and smiles… not sarcastically or rebelliously, but as though I’ve said something mildly humorous.  He’ll quiet down or write a couple of words on his paper, but five minutes later he’s back to talking or staring off into space.

When I run into him after school, he’s completely friendly, as though I’m his favorite teacher.

What the heck is wrong with this kid?

Does he honestly enjoy being in trouble all the time?  Is he glad that I take the time to tell him to shut his mouth and do the work?

It bugs me.  He’s a disgrace to high school dropouts everywhere.

Dang.

Some of our disaffected youth really need to learn how to act like hoodlums.

A teacher in my building died this week.

The students mostly found out either Thursday evening or Friday morning. They got the word mainly
from family members or peers, since our administrators decided not to make an official announcement.

Today was hard.

Fortunately, we already had a half-day scheduled to kick off President’s Day weekend.
I’m still grieving. He was a good man and a good teacher.

Today reminded me of old Ebenezer getting his ghostly visits. Ghosts from the past, present, and
future have visited my disheveled mind today.

Past

I was in tenth grade — about 15 or 16 years old — when I heard that my first high school art
teacher had died.

She had been one of my favorite teachers. Her dry observations about art, life, and teaching were
equal parts hilarious and insightful. She bore the stupidity of my classmates with many
longsuffering sighs, and she encouraged me to take advanced art, which was taught by her husband.

One day, on the way home from school, she had a stroke. Her car swerved and collided with other
vehicles. She was placed on life support while doctors tried to deal with the severe bleeding
inside her skull. Two weeks later, they pulled the plug.

Her husband — whose class I was taking at the time — was out for about eight or nine weeks.

Present

I don’t react immediately to tragic news. My tears flow when I witness other people’s reactions,
as though I need to empathize with others to express my own pain.

Students walk down the hall with tears streaming down their cheeks. They quietly sob in class.
They try to comfort their friends with inexperienced, ineffective pats and platitudes.

It’s all I can do to hold myself together, to act professional. I look at the grieving ones as
little as possible, trying to focus my attention on the students who were not in his class or who
are better at hiding their grief and shock.

It’s hard.

Future

Someday my time will end.

I hope that it will be many decades from now… my family tends to be long-lived, frequently
reaching the upper nineties while still sound in mind and body.

On the other hand, it may well happen during my teaching career. Looking at students’ faces today,
I know that I am seeing the same shock, the same grief that other teachers may see after I’ve lost
my sight forever.

As with Ebenezer and his final ghost, I see one possible future haunting the faces of my students
today. Like Ebenezer, I hope that this future does not arrive.

Like Ebenezer, all I can do is accept my own mortality and live my life as best I can.

Please

Please pray for the family, the friends, the co-workers, and — perhaps most of all — the students
of our departed teacher.

(Photo credit and license)

YES!

Whether by nature or by nurture, none can say, but I grew up with a certain “can-do” attitude toward improvising.  Duct tape was and is my closest friend (other than my wife, of course).  Colored duct tape is the greatest thing since WD-40.

This made life as a bachelor… shall we say… “interesting.”

My completely imaginary attorney advises me to say something like “don’t try this at home.”  The realist in me leans more toward “it’s your own dang fault if things screw up, so don’t try it if you’re just gonna blame me later.”

Windows for Dummies

The front door of my old apartment, cursed be its walls, had a nice big window that was completely transparent.  No frosting, tinting, mirroring, or other modern inventions of the 18th century offered any privacy whatsoever.

Walmart bags, on the other hand, are translucent but not transparent at all.  Out came the scissors and the tape and with only an hour or two of painstaking work, I had frosted windows… the bachelor-pad way.

I can’t sew (slightly untrue, actually) and couldn’t afford curtains, but a shower rod and old linens served to improve my sense of privacy in the other windows.

Don’t ask me about the moth holes.  Don’t.  It’s embarrassing.

My Shelves Runneth Over

Weburbanist.com has featured bookshelves made from books.  “This is pretty awesome,” my wife says. I’m not impressed.  She should see the end tables and ottomans I’ve made by stacking up old copies of Reader’s Digest.

When my bookshelves overflowed, I ended up expanding them with empty Velveeta cheese boxes and worthless trading cards.

My ink-cartridge bookends, however, were less than successful.  Those bloomin’ things leak.

Aylad the Iron Chef

We were given an incredibly expensive electric mixer for a wedding gift.  Actually owning a mixer feels strange to me, since duct-taping a couple of plastic forks to a drill bit always worked well enough for me.

While other people my age were learning from Martha Stewart how to turn a DIY herb garden into a seven-course meal, I was learning (via Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon) how to make grilled cheese sandwiches on an ironing board.

With an iron.

Now we have a nifty little panini press (apparently “panini” is Italian for “ironed bread”) that by comparison makes my ironing board look like, well, like an old, crusty, cheese-flavored ironing board.

Of course, the panini press’s duties have now expanded to making quesadillas (Spanish for “ironed flatbread”) and smoothing the occasional wrinkled necktie.  I should have bought one of those years ago.

He: Why do you own seven colors of duct tape?
Me: Why wouldn’t I own seven colors of duct tape?

(Photo credit and license)

Shakespeare, sorta

I’m kind of drawing a blank on any interesting biographical bits to share about the Bard today.  There are lots of interesting factoids about him; I’m just not really in the “researching” state of mind at the moment, and nothing comes immediately to mind.

The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays were famously performed, burned down as the result of a cannon misfire.  There, how’s that?

Meh… on to the weekly sonnet.

Sonnet 22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
      Presume not on th’ heart when mine is slain,
      Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

What I get out of it

Shakespeare is considering his increasing age as he writes this poem.  He could, at this point in his life, be feeling the ravages of time (or any other cliché you might care to use), but he refuses to be negative about his own lost youth.  He says that his mirror, or “glass,” won’t make him feel depressed about growing “old”… at least, not yet.

“So long” as the object of the poem has his or her “youth,” Shakespeare claims that he won’t feel old.  When “time’s furrows” appear on the young person’s face, on the other hand, the poet feels that “death” will bring an end to his “days.”

The poem’s metaphors get a little more complicated as Shakespeare explains that his own heart lives in the heart of the youngster to whom the poem is addressed, and the younger heart lives within Shakespeare’s “breast.”  The “beauty” that appears in the young man or woman’s face therefore is “raiment,” or clothing, for the poet’s heart.  “How,” we are asked, can Shakespeare “then be elder” than the youthful body which contains his heart?

I’m thinking that this might be one of the more tangled sonnets I’ve discussed here.  The tangling continues:  Shakespeare promises to be “wary” (cautious) with his own body – as cautious as a “tender nurse” is cautious with “her babe” — not to preserve his own life, but rather to protect the youngster’s heart beating in his chest.  Likewise, he would appreciate some care taken for his own heart.

To understand the last couplet, I admit, I sought help.  I wasn’t sure in what sense “presume” was being used.  It appears that after the tender expression of love Shakespeare offers in the first dozen lines, he throws in one brief admonition:  if my heart (in your body) is “slain,” don’t expect to get yours back.  You “gav’st me” your heart freely, and I don’t intend “to give [it] back again.”  This might, possibly, be just a hint of a threat… if your carelessness or infidelity breaks my heart, I can do as I please with the heart you have given me.

Is it relevant?

I don’t know the average ages of my readers, but even I (who am still young) have felt years younger while watching or interacting with a child.  Grandparents and parents often say that playing with children makes them feel young again.  Shakespeare is expressing similar sentiments to the object of his poem.

Once again, a sonnet which is usually labeled as a love poem could also represent an expression of familial love.  I’ve probably mentioned before that, whatever Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, he apparently loved his children dearly.  The first dozen lines could be a way of letting his children know that they make him feel young again… and the closing couplet could be a warning that they’d better make the old man proud.

Or not.  It probably is a romantic poem.  It’s just fun, sometimes, to look for other applications.  Shakespeare was a complicated man, and I hate making assumptions about what he had in mind.

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. — Proverbs 4:23

(Photo credit and license)

Since blogging about communication skills and other self-help topics seems to be such a popular activity these days, I thought I’d try it for myself.  Enjoy these:

6 Steps to Becoming a Better Office Communicator

1.  Be discreet

When making a personal call on your office phone, never mention co-workers by name.  It’s rude.  Use non-specific pronouns, instead.

Example: “Yeah, he did it again.  No, really.  I’ll tell you about it later… he might be listening right now.”  …or…  “You won’t believe what I saw her doing when I walked into the office this morning.”

2.  Acknowledge prior relationships with clients.

When you know you’ve got a client meeting coming up, pretend to answer a call on your cell phone.  As you walk into the meeting room, make a comment to your fictional listener that indicates the value of your relationship with the client.  They will appreciate the personal recognition.

Example: “I have to go; I’m about to have a meeting with _________. (pause as if listening) (explosive laughter) Yes, that one!”

3.  Reach out to newcomers.

Nothing is more isolating than being a new employee in an established firm.  When someone new comes to your workplace, be sure to welcome them as a friend.

Example: “Hey, new guy, come be my lookout while I raid the manager’s supply cabinet.”  …or…  “So she’s your new supervisor?  Wow, I hope that goes well for you.  Feel free to come to me if you need to vent.”

4.  Respect your elders.

Older and more experienced employees in your office have a wealth of information to share with you.  At the same time, however, they may not be current in the cutting-edge pop culture that you might mention in conversation, and that might make them feel uncomfortable.  When chatting with someone at least a decade older than you, remember to explain references to recent (post-MTV) cultural phenomena.

Example: ”This day is so bad, it’s like a Seinfeld episode gone wrong.  Seinfeld, if you didn’t know, is a New York-based sitcom about the fictionalized life of its eponymous starring actor, Jerry Seinfeld, and a number of his friends and relatives.  It’s pretty funny.  You should try it.”

5.  Leave them wanting more.

Don’t dominate — and ultimately destroy — the conversation by spewing out every thought you have in your mind.  Leave some topics of discussion for later.  One especially effective way to do this is by approaching the conversation by saying, ”I have (X number) questions to ask you” or “I have (X number) things to tell you”… and then leave one unsaid.  For the rest of the day, they will glance at you with an expectant and slightly uncomfortable look on their faces, wondering whether they should ask.

Example:  See above.

There you go, that’s it.  I hope that these six steps will lead you toward more efficient communication in the workplace.  Please note that I am not responsible for problems caused by the application or misapplication of the above advice.  Have a happy Monday!

P.S. Thanks (and apologies) to DeepFriar and Havi Brooks for unwittingly planting the seeds of this post in my mind.  Go read their posts; you’ll probably enjoy them more than you did mine.

My fingers itch...

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

My name is Aylad MacOdys…

Hello, Aylad.

…and I’m a gamer.

Thank you, Aylad, for sharing.

It’s true, I am.  I’m not a “serious gamer” or a “hardcore gamer” or what-have-you, but I would definitely spend hours each day playing video games if I didn’t have other, more important things to do (and a sweet, beautiful wife who knows there are always more important things to do).

Gaming is not my only pastime, by any means.  I’m also a reader, and recently a blogger, and I enjoy web design, and I occasionally like to indulge a bit of creativity in less digital realms.

Sooner or later, however, “the itch” finds its way into my head, and once there, it grows.  And grows some more.  And spreads.  And soon, I am back in front of one electronic device or another, pressing buttons and waiting for the satisfaction of completed goals.

Don’t listen to people who say that gaming is addictive.  They don’t know what they’re talking about.  Cocaine is addictive.  Gaming is GAMING. (more…)