- 3.00
- 99.95%
- 4.00
The above numbers provide important insight into how well people are doing. But, the numbers can be deceiving.
Baseball
ERA, or Earned Run Average is one of the ways to judge the effectiveness of a major league baseball pitcher. ERA measures how many runs a pitcher allows over a 9-inning game. A 3.00 ERA is considered very good. In fact, last season, only one team, the St Louis Cardinals, had a team ERA below 3.00.
- Cardinals – 2.94
- Pirates – 3.21
- Cubs – 3.36
- Mets – 3.43
- Dodgers – 3.44
- Astros – 3.57
- Blue Jays – 3.80
- World Champion Kansas City Royals – 3.73
Compare those ERA’s from playoff teams with some of the teams who didn’t make the playoffs
- Seattle Mariners – 4.16
- Red Sox – 4.31
- Braves – 4.41
- Phillies – 4.69
- Rockies – 5.04 (Coors Field in Denver: Where pitchers go to die)
ERA is not a perfect indicator of whether a team will make the playoffs or not. The Yankees with their team ERA of 4.08 made it, as did the Rangers who carried a horrible 4.24 ERA into the post season. But, as a rule, ERA is a good indicator of how your team and even how an individual pitcher is doing.
So, if you saw a pitcher with an ERA of 9.00 what would you think? Good pitcher or bad pitcher?
I wouldn’t be asking the question if the answer were obvious. A pitcher with an ERA of 9.00 might be the best pitcher in the league.
System Availability
My job has a couple of metrics that I get judged on. the most important one is system availability. As the Technical Account Manager, my team looks to me to keep the computers up and running. If they go down, we start a clock ticking. Every minute of down time counts against my percentage. If I keep the availability above 99.95% my team stays out of the red. If Availability drops below that number, we pay a penalty. The more it drops, the higher the penalty. In a 24 hour day there are 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. A 0.05% down time is 43 seconds. That means I have 43 seconds per day that my systems can be off line before I pay a penalty.
I watch the system availability numbers very closely.
Currently the system availability number for one of my sites is 99.79%. That’s bad, right?
I’m not worried.
It has to do with time.
Today is the 20th of November. My penalty is calculated at the end of the month. Six days ago, when my service interruption happened, my percentage was 99.59%. But, after 6 days of no outages, I’ve brought it up by .2%. If we have a typical month, I’ll be back into the 99.95% safety zone by the end of the month.
And that’s the danger of taking numbers without considering time. Simply picking a number, even a number you jnderstand like ERA or system availability can be misleading if you pick it at the wrong time.
Grades
I have four sophmores, a freshman, an eight grader and two seventh graders at my house. They understand this concept of numbers and time. . .and they try to utilize it to their advantage.
Hey, what’s this F in History?
Well, sure, it’s an F now, but I’ve got plenty of time to bring it up by end of term.
When does the term end?
Friday.
We can get lulled into a false sense of security knowing that while our metrics right this instant might be poor, they can improve over time.
For example, my goal every month is 100% availability. As soon as I take my first minute of down time, I can never again recapture 100%. Similarly with grades, recovery only gets you so far. Perfection requires you be diligent from the very beginning. That can work for things like grades and computer systems. Sometimes, like with baseball, you know a pitcher is going to give up some runs. It’s important to remember that it’s a long season.
That pitcher that I mentioned earlier with the 9.00 ERA? In his first game of the season he gave up three runs in three innings. By the end of the season he might have an ERA in he 2.00 range.
Remember to keep numbers in perspective. Don’t take them out of time.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
It’s a popular facebook game. You post a list of 26 things about you and share a little. But, why? Why do we care? I’m thinking about that as I list the 26 things about me:
- A- Age: 50
- B- Biggest fear: Failure
- C- Current time: 11:24 PM
- D- Drink you last had: Water
- E- Every day starts with: Great Value Energy drink mix. . .in water
- F- Favorite song: Summer Highland Falls
- G- Ghosts, are they real?: Yes. Ghosts and worse
- H- Hometown: Lacey, WA
- I- In love with: My lovely wife of 28 years
- J- Jealous of: No one
- K- Killed someone?: Not sure why this question is even here? Seriously, they couldn’t find another “K” question? Kissed? Kind of food? But, killed? (You are correct, I avoided answering it.)
- L- Last time you cried?: Watching a short clip of BYU’s national champion rugby team doing the Haka
- M- Middle name: Milan (Although no one except my family can pronounce it correctly)
- N- Number of siblings: Not sure. Really, I have no idea. It’s more than 8, but other than that, I have no clue.
- O- One wish: To be the kind of man my kids think I am
- P- Person you last called: A supervisor on our call floor in Kentucky
- Q- Question you’re always asked: Really? (After hearing I have 13 kids)
- R- Reason to smile: I have a roof over my head, food in my cupboards, a job and most of my kids around me.
- S- Song last sang: Sweet Hour Of Prayer
- T- Time you woke up: 3:30AM
- U- Underwear color: White
- V- Vacation destination: Somewhere dirty. Mountains, lakes, desert. Doesn’t much matter so long as I can sleep in a tent and cook over a fire.
- W- Worst habit: Procrastination
- Y- Your favorite food: My lovely wife’s homemade cinnamon-apple pie
- X- X-Rays you’ve had: Teeth, bowel, hand
- Z- Zodiac sign: Too much personal information
One of my favorite business books is “First Break All The Rules.” One of the lessons from that book is a list of questions that you can use to gauge how satisified your employees are. One of the qustions was, “Do you have a best friend at work?” Think about what that means, especially in light of the share something about yourself trend.
We share to connect with one another. In Monsters, Inc Sully find a baby that has managed to get from the human world into the moster world. He names her Boo. Mike is not pleased.
Sulley, you’re not supposed to name it. Once you name it, you start getting attached to it.
And Mike’s right. Once you name something, or someone, they change from an object to a person. It’s harder to be rude to a person than an object. A group of researchers once did a study where people were asked to evaluate the responsiveness of a computer. The researchers found that when people provided the feedback while logged into the computer, the scores were higher than if they provided the feedback logged into a different computer. It’s almost like they didn’t want to offend the computer.
So, why do we do these “26 things” surveys? Because Facebook, in fact all social media, is pretty impersonal. As we share information, we start to see the names online as real people rather than just a screen name. We change them, and ourselves from objects to people.
And the online world needs more people.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Here’s a copy if you want to post it yourself.
- Twenty-six things about me…
- A- Age:
- B- Biggest fear:
- C- Current time:
- D- Drink you last had:
- E- Every day starts with:
- F- Favorite song:
- G- Ghosts, are they real?:
- H- Hometown:
- I- In love with:
- J- Jealous of:
- K- Killed someone?:
- L- Last time you cried?:
- M- Middle name:
- N- Number of siblings:
- O- One wish:
- P- Person you last called:
- Q- Question you’re always asked:
- R- Reason to smile:
- S- Song last sang:
- T- Time you woke up:
- U- Underwear color:
- V- Vacation destination:
- W- Worst habit:
- Y- Your favorite food:
- X- X-Rays you’ve had:
- Z- Zodiac sign:
Tell your friends about this!
I have a workshop full of tools. There is wood stacked against the walls in my garage. I have three different kinds of glue, eight different hammers and at least a dozen different saws.
There’s a difference between computers and woodworking, of course. With computers, when you get done with your day, your desk probably looks exactly like it did when you started your day.
With woodworking, when you get done with your day, you have something tangible that you can hold, give away, use, or break up and start again.
Woodworking has helped me be a better project manager. It’s helped me understand process better. I’ve had to ask, “What is the real activity of woodworking?” Anyone who’s ever been to Ikea can tell you, it’s the putting stuff together. That’s when a pile of stuff that looks slightly like wood turns into something that looks slightly like furniture.
And, in woodworking, there is certainly satisfaction in putting the pieces together. But, if you start with a sheet of plywood and a bunch of 2×4 boards, there’s a step before you can glue the pieces together. You have to cut out the pieces.
Power tools are fun. Having the ability to “make little ones out of big ones” gives a feelings of awesome power under control. And yet, the actual cutting depends on accurate measuring. It’s not unusual to spend fifty or sixty times as long setting up a cut as actually cutting. It might take 10 seconds to rip a 2×4 into two 2×2’s as I did for the foot lockers pictured above. But, to get that cut, I have to configure my table saw with the right blade and then very carefully measure the distance between the fence and the blade. Five minutes to set up a cut is not unusual.
Cutting a 2×4 (which is actually 1.5″ by 3.5″) into a 2×2 (actual size 1.5″ by 1.5″) requires that you set the distance between the fence and the blade to an inch and a half. But, you now end up with one board that is 1.5″x1.5″ and the other that is 1.5″ by 1 and 7/8″. You have to remember the saw blade is 1/8″ wide. So, to turn the second half of your ripped board into a 2×2, you have turn it around and run it through the saw again. You end up with two 2×2 boards and a 1/4″ strip.
Clearly the cutting is a big part of woodworking. So, what is the real activity of woodworking? Gluing the final product together and cutting up the boards.
But, how do I know where to cut the boards? In the picture above, each 2×2 in the “frame” for the foot locker requires four separate cuts and four drill press holes. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting down to the last cut and making a mistake or worse, discovering a previously unseen flaw in the board. Literally, hours of work have to be redone.
I designed the plans for those foot lockers. I had to create the entire thing on paper before I ever turned on the saw. So, what is the real activity of woodworking? Clearly, it’s glueing up the final product and cutting out the wood and designing the product.
The temptation is to skip one of the earlier steps and get to the “real” activity.
I don’t want to spend hours drawing up detailed plans. Let’s just get to the part where we use power tools!
I don’t want to spend time realigning the saw to compensate for a 1/4″ saw blade. Let’s just get to the part where we get to build stuff!
I have to admit that at times I’ve been guilty of wanting to get past the preliminary steps so that I could get to the real parts. You want to know what happens whenever I do that? I end up with a final product that isn’t very good. I have to go back and redo the previous steps.
Eventually, I realized that the process of building a footlocker, or a bookshelf or a picture frame, was more than just the end piece. In fact, the last step, the putting it together is the quickest part of the entire process. But, the project, involves all the steps.
Project Management is very much like that. Every project has multiple steps. Often the steps depend on one another. To be a good project manager I need to embrace each step and realise that even the beginning steps are really part of the finished product. Trying to skip any one of them risks putting the entire project at risk.
So, meetings, emails, follow up phone calls, they are all part of the process of bringing a new database online or upgrading to a new version of a product.
Embrace the whole and realize that the finished result is the sum of those many little steps along the way
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Rodney, I wanted to introduce our newest project manager. This is Edward. Edward, this is Rodney. Rodney used to work for WordPerfect, too.
Oh? When were you there?
I started in 1988. I left in 1992 when the layoffs happened.
Oh, then you probably worked for me. I was a director in support.
Oh wait. I know YOU.
You hear it all the time, “Don’t burn bridges.” You never know who you will need to work with again.
Edward was the director of support when I announced that I was leaving WordPerfect to go to work for Microsoft. WordPerfect management didn’t take it well. (How Not To Quit A Job.)
Working with Edward again forced me to reexamine some of core beliefs.
- Did I do or say anything during my leaving of WordPerfect that I might have to apologize for?
- Did Edward do or say anything during my leaving that I needed to get past in order to work with him?
As a result of WordPerfect’s actions all those years ago, I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. (I Do NOT Want To Know What That Just Cost Me.) In getting reacquainted I shared with Edward the story of my leaving from my side, including the impact that WordPerfect’s actions had on my finances. How much did I blame Edward for that?
I worked through some of these questions over the next couple of days. While Edward was not on my team, our two teams shared the same cube farm. At one point Edward and I were talking to an engineer. He wasn’t sure if he needed to do introductions.
Have you met Rodney?
Yeah, I once cost Rodney hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I winced at the comment. I needed to figure to this out or our working relationship was going to be awkward. As I went over the events from 25 years ealier in my head, I came to the realization that Edward was doing the best he could at the time. He had actually been a good boss. And when the situation with my leaving got tense, he had stepped up to shield me as much as possible from the events that were out of both of our control.
I pulled him aside the next day.
Edward, I just want to correct something I said the other day. You did not cost me a bunch of stock options at Microsoft. I don’t think WordPerfect handled it well, but my memory of your role was that you were completely professional and did your best to resolve the situation well for everyone.
I also pointed Edward to the blog entries that wrote about that week. It was comforting to realize that I didn’t need to change any of the entries now that someone involved was reading it.
In the IT world, be careful about burning bridges. You never know who you will work with in the future.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Copyright www.jeanjullian.com
Tell your friends about this!
Who was the greatest baseball player of all time?
Babe Ruth?
Cy Young?
Satchel Paige?
Someone else?
You might as well ask, what’s the best food of all time? Except in baseball, we keep track of statistics to make the comparisons easier. Babe Ruth was the greatest hitter of his generation. He was the first player to hit 60 home runs in a season. He set records that stood for decades. He was also a fantastic pitcher, having one of the lowest ERA of any pitcher in the World Series, 3 games, 17 innings pitched, an ERA of 0.87.
Many people consider him the greatest to ever play the game. And yet. . .
Many of Ruth’s records were eventually broken. The single season record for homeruns, which Ruth set at 60 in 1927 was broken in 1961 by Roger Maris. And it was broken again by a bunch of guys jacked up on steroids years later. It’s currently at 73. Ruth ranks only 3rd in lifetime homeruns at 714. Hank Aaron went on to hit 755 and someone on steroids hit 762. So, great as he was, Ruth has been surpassed in many areas. (And not just by the steroid users.)
Cy Young, on the other hand holds a record that will never be broken. Not that might not be broken. But, will never be broken. Cy Young won 511 baseball games. He also lost 316. By comparison, the next highest win total is nearly a hundred less. Walter Johnson won 417. The most an active player has is Bartolo Colon at 218, less than half. If a pitcher gets 300 wins in a career it’s an guaranteed ticket to the Hall of Fame. No one will ever approach Cy Young’s win total. Not even close.
Incidently, Cy Young’s 316 losses is also a record. The most by an active player is Mark Buehrle at 160.
So what?
It’s hard to compare players from different eras, or players in different positions.
The baseball Hall of Fame ballots got mailed out this week. Since 1936, 310 people have been inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Not one of them was ever elected with 100% of the vote.
Hall of Fame voting is kind of weird and kind of fun. Baseball writers get to vote. Five hundred and forty nine reporters and baseball people will vote. They can vote for up to 10 players. If a player gets selected by 75% of the voters, he is elected. If he gets selected by less than 5% of the voters, he is no longer eligible.
Not everyone is eligible, and a player has to be out of the game for at least 5 years to appear on the ballot. And in 78 years, the voters have never agreed 100% on who should be in.
I got to thinking about why that is. Or, since I’m not a voter, why it might be. Are there really people back in 1936 who didn’t think Babe Ruth belonged in the Hall of Fame? Were there people who didn’t think that Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in history wasn’t worthy of the Hall?
Of course not. Those voters knew that that Ruth and Young and Ty Cobb and Randy Johnson, and Tom Seaver, and countless other baseball greats belonged in the Hall of Fame. So, why didn’t they vote for them?
I think it’s the illusion of perfection. I’m talking about baseball, but it applies to life in general. No one is perfect. I’m not talking in a biblical or religious sense, although that is also true. But, in sports, in life, in our jobs, none of us is perfect at what we do.
Cy Young won 511 games. That’s amazing. He lost 316.
Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs. That’s incredible. He also e also struck out 1330 times in his career.
Neither man was a perfect baseball player. I think some of the voters want to remind poeple of that fact.
As I mentioned, the new ballots are out and leading the list this year is Ken Griffey Jr. Junior, as fans in Seattle call him, is eligible for the first time. He will be elected on the first ballot. Most likely he’ll be wearing a Mariners hat when he is inducted. That will make him the first Mariners player elected to the Hall of Fame. (Dave Niehaus, the Mariners broadcaster for many years was elected a few years before he passed away.)
There’s a possibility that Griffey could be the first player elected with 100% of the vote. He wasn’t a perfect player but he was the closest many people have ever seen. He carried a horrible Mariners team for many years, and a couple of glory years. He saved baseball in Seattle back in the 1990’s. He was named one of the 50 greatest baseball palyers in the history fo Major League Baseball.
And he will probably get 98% of the vote
Maybe striving for perfection only means something if you cannot actually achieve it. You can get really close, but we all have areas we can improve.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Can we job shadow you for an assignment at school?
Sure, when?
Tomorrow.
My company has a very strict visitor policy. It’s strictly “as needed.” There are no casual “drop by the office” visits allowed. The security guards are kind of sticklers about it.
My 7th grade sons job shadowing me meant I had to work from home. Not normally a problem, except that this is my home office.
Yes, it is as small as it looks: 7′ x 4′ with no windows, not enough room for a chair, and don’t stand to the right of the desk or you can’t shut the door.
I work on multi-million dollar projects. I can make my job look interesting to a couple of 13 year olds, right?
Right?
I should explain the office setup. I’m actually thrilled with my office. Seriously. Every job I’ve had, and during the times when I was between jobs, I’ve always had a home office. Typically it’s been in the garage. I throw up some walls, install a door, and bake in the summer and freeze in the winter.
When we made on offer on our current house, like a lot of Utah homes, it had an unfinished basement. Unlike most Utah homes, this basement used to be finished. An unoccupied house and a broken sprinkler head resulted in a 6″ wading pool in the entire downstairs. By the time we were looking at it, the damage was long past, but there were some walls, but no carpets or baseboards.
I’m normally terrible at real estate. I’ve lost one home to foreclosure. I’ve lost a few hundred thousand dollars on a “dream home” that we built at the exact wrong time. However, this time I hit it just right. Three years ago the market was bottomed out and sellers were getting creative.
Our sellers offered a $10,000 bonus to finish the basement. We carved up the basement to give each child their own bedroom with a door and a window. And we carved a few feet off the family room to give me an office.
As a writer, in addition to a Program Manager, I love the intimate space. The walls are full of original art and kids pictures. The wall acts as the “back” of my chair. I can close the door and there’s not enough room to lose much. I really like the small space. Except on job share day.
When I work at home, I literally spend all day at that desk. Now, I have to figure out how to make job shadowing meaningful without forcing my sons to stand next to the desk all day.
Ultimately we decided on an interview. They each had to come up with five questions to ask about my job. Right out of the gate?
How much money do you get paid?
Okay, let’s talk about how to ask questions.
How much education do you need?
What do you like best about your job?
Do you work with interesting people?
What’s the hardest part of your job?
They surprised me with their insights. They actually came up with more than five questions. As I worked through their answers it helped me see the pieces of my job that don’t involve sitting behind a desk. Finally, I invited them to squeeze past my desk and I took them on a tour of my computer desktop.
First stop? Email. I explained how Outlook worked. The 24 unread messages in my Inbox and the various folders to store email. We moved on to other tools and processes. As we ended I came back to Outlook. In the twenty minutes we’d been on our tour, my unread messages had jumped to 51.
Fortunately the job shadow only needed to last an hour. My boys were bored well before that. They love playing with computers, they don’t think a job in the computer industry is very interesting. It’s hard to blame them.
I realized that just because it’s hard to make a job look interesting, that doesn’t mean it’s boring to do. It’s just boring to watch.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.– Robert Binyon, “For The Fallen”
Few holidays transcend multiple cultures. Most that do are religious in nature. There’s Christmas on December 25th. There’s Hanukkah, December 6 through December 14 this year. There’s Easter, March 27 in 2016. And then there are a few additional ones. There’s New Year’s Eve and New Years Day, of course. There’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day, September 19. And then there’s today: November 11.
It’s called Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day in Britain and other Commonwealth countries. France and Belgium also call it Remembrance Day. In the United States, it’s known as Veterans Day. In Poland it’s Independence Day.
November 11, 1918 is the actual date we are not so much celebrating as remembering. It marked the end of hostilities in the Great War. Sadly, our ancestors didn’t yet know they needed to number them. Today we call it the end of World War I. Hostilities ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.” The treaty that formally ended the war was signed months later on June 28, 1919. But, the people of the world stopped trying to kill each other 97 years ago today.
There was a thought, a hope really, that the devastation had been so bad that perhaps the countries of the world would see it as a chance to step back and reassess how they settled disagreements between countries. It didn’t work, of course. Some would say it was foolish to ever think it would. Just a short 20 years later, the same countries would be plunged right back into conflict with each other again.
But, at the time, there was hope.
War, despite it’s horrors, brings innovation. Advances in aviation came from the conflict in the early 20th century. We learned better how to treat the wounded. We did manage to for the most part abandon the use of chemical weapons on the scale they were used in that conflict.
But, despite any benefits, the adage is true: War is hell. And those who fight are asked to walk into the fires of hell, to kill or be killed, to set aside their natural inclination to nuture and lift each other and instead find the most efficient way to destroy one another.
We like to think of today’s wars as almost civilized affairs. We can drop smart bombs on a house and leave those standing on either side untouched. We can destroy an enemy by obliterating his infrastructure from the safety of 30,000 feet. Our warriors are no longer conscripted. So, we can convince ourselves that we are not sending our young men and women to bleed and die. They are volunteering. That makes it more okay, right?
I’m not ignoring the need to go to war. Some people and countries only respect or respond to force. I’m also not glamorizing or glorifying it. We should use only the amount of force necessary to ensure victory, but no more.
I’m glad I don’t have to decide where that line is drawn.
Today, much of the free world takes a moment to celebrate those who stand on the wall so that the rest of us can sleep peacefully at night.
Today is also a day to say thanks. To so who serve and those who have served and those who support them.
Mayb God keep you safe and may we work toward a world where you are no longer needed.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
One more bend in the road.
One more twist of the pavement.
Surely it will be around the next curve.
It’s 48 miles from Spokane, WA to Tekoa, WA. When you’re a child, it feels like forever. My parents would keep us entertained by having us watch for the Tekoa train trestle. It was an unlikely Mecca that we visited on a regular basis.
Tekoa really doesn’t have much to attract random visitors. It’s an hour’s drive from Spokane down state highway 27. But, this little town of less than a thousand people has had a strange pull on me and mine for generations.
Where are your people from? Not necessarily where are you from. I’m not personally from Tekoa, WA. I haven’t been there in ages, and while we drifted back and forth through the town, like the rising and falling tide fills and then drains a tide pool, it’s the town that represents my family heritage. It’s where folks go to die. At least so of a particular generation.
Where are your people from? When people ask, is your family from around here? What do you answer?
And does it matter if you have an answer?
I think it does. And if you don’t have a place you’re from, you should pick one. Shelly Ausmus wrote a blog post about the tiny town of Tekoa, WA. I reposted on my Facebook wall with a link that said, “I’m from here.” I tagged the older generation; my uncles, aunts, second cousins. Not surprisingly the post got reshared a couple of times. The one that surprised me was my oldest daughter. She reshared and said, “I’m from here.”
She’s been there once.
When one of my children was born in Pullman, WA we took her with us when we went to pick him up from the hospital. During the three days we had to stay in the area for the paperwork to finalize, we drove up to Tekoa. We drove through town and I pointed out my grandparents’ old house. And we went to the cemetery and cleaned their headstones. We walked through the cemetary and I pointed out the Warwicks, the Graffs, the Blairs; ancestors that were only stories and names on a pedigree chart to her.
I don’t know why it surprised me that she would claim this tiny little farming town on the Idaho border as one of her cultural birthplaces. I’m glad she did. It’s good to be from somewhere. It builds continuity. It builds a connection between the past generation and the next.
It’s good to be from somewhere.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Daddy! She’s pulling my hair!
This was a physical impossibility. I knew it was because “she” was an 18 month old toddler and the “victim” was a 5 year. Sure, a toddler certainly can pull hair, but not with their current seating. We were in a rented Dodge Caravan. We’d been a sedan family but were considering moving to a minivan. We had the two kids, but knew that we would want more kids.
I knew that the baby couldn’t pull her sister’s hair because the baby was in a car seat in the middle seat and the kindergartner was in the back seat. It was impossible for the baby to reach back that far.
Ow! Make her stop!
Last week I wrote about getting lost. (It Was My Fault, But Not For The Reason You Think.) I blamed myself for not bringing a map.
How often are we are own worst enemy?
While working for Microsoft many years ago I ended up on a team as a Program Manager. I had had a successful career at Microsoft up to that point, but hadn’t really worked as a PM on a development team. PMs are the glue that holds the projects together. I was pretty weak glue. My developers pretty much did what they wanted. My testers worked directly with the developers and sometimes didn’t even invite me to their meetings.
And I didn’t know what to do. So, I kept doing what I had been doing. I worked hard, I really did. But, I was working badly. And it didn’t end well. It wasn’t the first time I’d been fired, but it hurt the worst. Looking back, it wold be easy to blame my developers or my testers or my managers, or even the other PMs.
The fault wasn’t with any of them. It was my fault.
I knew I was struggling. I didn’t know how to get better. And Microsoft is not a place that does a lot of “reaching out” to help employees who are struggling.
I should have left. Once I figured out that I couldn’t be successful at that job, I should have gotten out of Dodge. I didn’t. I thought, “If I work a little harder, I can turn this around.”
You own your career, just like I own mine. No one is going to care as much about your career as you do. If your situation is tough, change it.
I know how trite that can sound to some people. I’ve been in situations where I really wanted to change my circumstances, but I couldn’t. I was well and truly trapped; stuck in a state where I had no job prospects, deep in debt with no way out. I could blame my lying partner that doublecrossed me. I could blame the situation. I could blame a lot of things. But, really there was only one person to blame: me.
I took on all the debt that weighed on me like an anchor. I’m the one that chose to move across the country on the word of someone I barely knew. I’m the one that signed to buy a house that I really couldn’t afford.
While I was in the tough spot, I really wanted out. And eventually thanks to some help from family, and a ton of hard work, I managed to move back to Seattle. I managed to get back on with Microsoft, and I managed to pay off my $80,000 in debt.
I’m responsible for me and my decisions. I was laid off one time from a large non-profit. It took me 13 months to find another job. Things got really lean during those months. I could have blamed the non-profit for laying me off. I could have blamed the terrible economy that made jobs scarce. But, there was really only one person to blame: Me.
I’d liet my skills lapse while working at the non-profit. I’d not kept up an online profile. I had assumed I’d work there forever and didn’t worry about keeping my resume current. The decisions I make today may not have an impact on today’s job. But, I have learned I need to look to the future. I need to prepare for my next job, and the one after that. I need to constantly be improving, even if it’s just reading a business book, or learning a new technology. I have all the time in the world to prepare for the future. If I fail to take advantage of that time, I have no one to blame but myself.
We pulled the van over the side of the road and turned to the backseats. Sure enough, the baby had a big handful of my daughter’s hair.
There’s no way she could reach back there. How did she manage to get her hands on your hair?
Well. . .I leaned forward so she could reach it.
No one to blame but herself.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved