Shallow Thinker

This past weekend, Queen Kelley loaded up the van and took Butterfly away on a mother-daughter trip in Tennessee.  While they lived the high life in a luxurious cabin with a couple of friends, Ladybug and I were left to fend for ourselves.  From about 10:00 on Friday morning until 6:30 Sunday evening, we had to lean on each other and find some way to survive.  It was a difficult, arduous task, but we somehow made it.  Here are a few of the lessons I learned:

• Kids can poop up to 350 times a day.
• They always do it when you’re in a store, museum, or something like that.  Even if you just changed them, they’ll do it again.
• Stores are good for shopping.  They’re also very good for allowing your kid to run around and get some energy out.  They can play with all the toys they want and when they’re tired, you just pick ‘em up and take ‘em home.  No clean-up required.
• Nap time is never long enough.
• Kids do the cutest things when no one else is around to see it.
• When you try to describe the cute thing, it never sounds quite as good.
• The person you’re describing it to probably doesn’t care, anyhow.
• I am getting old.  Ring-Around-The-Rosies is a wonderful game, but Daddy’s knees find it difficult to continue falling down….over, and over, and over, and over, and…
• Toys are good for entertainment in about 5-minute spurts.  If you want to keep a kid occupied for 30+ minutes, put ‘em on the bed and wrestle with them.  Oh, and watch-out for the whole “falling off” thing.
• Olives are a food group.  They should be sliced and eaten by wearing them on the tips of your fingers.  This way it’s a food and a fashion statement.
• Ladybug knows who her mother is and asked about her during the absence.  She only cried for her mother when I took away the shoe that she was eating.
• I am not capable of being a primary caregiver.  I love my girls and I devote a lot of attention to them, but my skills are in the realm of entertainment.  Health and Hygiene require too much work.
• There’s almost no way that I could handle 2 kids for an extended period of time.  I don’t know how my wife does it everyday.  I suspect drugs.

So there you go.  That’s why there was no post on Friday or this weekend.  I was busy devoting my time to the little 18-month old.  I suppose I could have let Ladybug play a little by herself, but this was my weekend to devote attention to her…and that’s exactly what I did.  Kelley claims that she’s now spoiled rotten.  That’s odd, she was a perfect little angel for me.

Engineers are generally known for being straigh-forward.  Our assessments are based on numerical data, in-depth analyses, or advanced research.  It’s kind of like “Here are the facts.  Enjoy.”  The problem in this is that engineers aren’t well known for having people skills or for being able to adequately market their products.  (That’s why they got an engineering degree and not a marketing one.)  For instance, if a customer pays for some research, we not only need to give them a good product, we need to wrap it in a pretty package as well.  My boss’s boss (who was originally my boss, but she’s now moved up…speaking of the boss’s boss there, not the boss…got it?) is very good at this.  She says “John, you have to take off your engineering hat sometimes and put on your selling hat.”

So, I’ve started trying to work on the balance between truthfulness, diplomacy, and selling my company as the best thing since smoked cheese.  (sliced bread does nothing for me)  In a meeting today, one of my customers asked me to modify our proposal to include supporting evidence for “spiral development.”  Not wanting to appear as ignorant as I am, I nodded, agreed, and gave a hearty “harumph”.  After I got back to my office, I jumped on the googles and here’s what it says:

Spiral Development
A process for implementing evolutionary acquisition within which the end-state requirements are not known at program initiation but are refined through continuous user feedback, demonstration, and risk management so that each increment provides the user the best possible capability.

For those who don’t like fancy-speak, let me break it down.  (“Break it down” as in “make it easier to understand”, not like MC Hammer.) You start a project and have no idea where you are going with it.  So, you try some stuff, see what people think, implement some changes, try again, more thinking, more changes, etc.  You continue this cycle until somebody says “Ah, HA!  I think we’re finished!”  And, since no one knew where you were headed in the first place, they all agree that you must be there and then you pat yourselves on the back.

It’s odd.  When I do my projects like that, my boss says that it’s “aimless wandering” and “poor planning.”  But now I’ll have the advantage.  I’ll put on my selling hat and demand that they recognize how innovative I am for implementing spiral development into our workplace!  I might even require that they give me a raise for my keen grasp of this developmental concept.

…and then I’ll put my selling hat in a box with my engineering hat and other belongings as security excorts me off the premises. I guess that’s the “feedback” part they’re talking about.

The sweltering heat is beginning to yield its hold over the south and we’re able to enjoy temperatures in the low 90’s.  Hurricanes bring us rain so that our grass turns from “dead” to “slightly less dead”.  This means that on Saturday mornings, you hear the distant hum of lawnmowers across the neighborhood.  (It’s a distant hum because I only gut my grass when I need to make a path for the elephants and tigers to cross.)  But more importantly, the silence of weeknights dissolves into the rhythm of drums on Friday evenings.  The bass drums echo for miles around and the rat-tat-tat of the snares stay crisp across the neighborhoods.  It’s football season.  I can feel it in my bones…I can smell it in the air.

I do love football.  If allowed, I’d plop on the couch and watch it all weekend.  A great coaching strategy is the only thing that can overcome a large athletic deficit.  The irony is that pure athleticism can sometimes overcome great coaching strategies.  So, each week, you watch the best-of-the-best lay it all on the line.  Sure, the concept sounds cool, but the reality is that it’s just a bunch of guys trying to run each other over.  Archaic?  Definitely.  But I’d join ‘em in a heartbeat.  I’d take the league minimum to go out and try my hardest.

The only thing that stinks about football season is the fans.  They go on and on and on about their team.  I like to talk theory behind the sport.  Pros and cons of a match-up.  Who to watch and expectations of the game.  Die-hard fans like to talk about how awesome their team is no matter what.  The conversation is usually something like this:

Me - Boy, Team A sure will have a tough time this week.  Team B looks like they can defend the pass pretty well.
Fan - WE’RE GONNA CRUSH THEM LIKE BUGS!
Me - Probably…but you have to admit that their secondary is very well-adapted at the spread offense which forces you to rely more on your running game.
Fan - THEY AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’ ON US!  WE’RE GONNA DOMINATE!
Me - Gotcha.  Well, I hope your QB gets out of the hospital soon. That might help.
Fan - OUR BACK-UP QUARTERBACK WILL EAT THESE GUYS FOR SUPPER!  HE SLEEPS ON NAILS!
Me - ooohhhhh-kay.  So, how ’bout that weather.
Fan - OUR DEFENSIVE LINE IS GONNA TACKLE THAT HURRICANE AND MAKE IT SUFFER!  AIN’T NO SILLY WIND GONNA SLOW US DOWN.  CHAMPIONSHIP ALL THE WAY.  WE’RE ALL-UNIVERSE!

Maybe the problem is that these people actually have faith in their teams and I expect mine to lose.  Sour grapes, I guess.  Sometimes I try to think of what it would be like to support a winning team, but I’ve been loyal to Mercer and Georgia Tech this long…why turn back?

I’ve lurked on the web, listened to the news, read articles, and been in numerous discussions.  I’m amazed at all of the discussions that are going on about the election.  It seems like everyone you pass has an opinion on why their candidate is the right one and the other one is a liar from the deepest pits of the abyss.

I have taken a step back and evaluated both campaigns objectively and I’ve decided that I will finally give my official endorsement.  But first, let met give a brief commentary:

Obama has indeed helped our country take a step in the right direction.  By no means are our internal race relations at a place where we can be comfortable, but we’re at least moving in that direction.  The same goes for Hillary.  When the primary is up for grabs by a woman and a minority, then we’re starting to move in the right direction.  I would give a nod to Palin, as well, but McCain picked her, so it’s not really as groundbreaking…though it is still worth noting.

That being said, I still think that they are all politicians.  Yes, I know that it’s a harsh declaration, but it’s true.  Not a single one of ‘em is blameless.  They’ve all run for office, made promises that they couldn’t/wouldn’t keep, voted for their own pay raises, and used their positions of power inappropriately at times.  Not a single one of them is blameless, and that’s just disconcerting.  How can I vote for a person that I know will mess-up?

So what’s a guy to do?  Is there anyone out there who can save our country?  Can we be taken from this financial/moral/political valley and raised to new heights?  Is there a candidate that can lift us up from the ashes and make us the dominant yet caring superpower that we know we can be?

Yes, yes there is…

Hey, if you’re going to have someone lie to you, take your money, mess-up relations with other countries, and then live comfortably for the rest of their life off of your tax dollars…I’d like to be that person.

*Those interested in learning more about my official platform can visit their local Chinese buffet.  That’s where I stand.