Do you want to be tall, or do you want to be well?
My dad was serious. He was giving me the choice. I was 13 years old. Dr Lamb, had just given me the diagnosis for why I had ended up in the hospital with what turned out not to be acute appendicitis.
It’s called regional enteritis. But most people call it by its more common name, Crohn’s Disease. I’d like to attack it aggressively, with lifestyle changes and a combination of azulfidine which is a sulpha drug and prednisolone which is a steroid. Given your age, the prednisolone will most likely take about 4 or 5 inches off your height. It keeps the bones from growing.
What’s the alternative?
Well, most doctors treat Crohn’s by cutting out the affected portion of the intestine. But, we don’t really understand what causes Crohn’s. Often after surgery the disease comes back elsewhere. In fact, it’s the biggest worry about Crohn’s. We end up removing most of the upper intestine and people eventually starve to death.
But, you don’t want to do that?
No. I want to see if we hit it with massive amounts of azulfidine and steroids, if we can’t get it under control so that at least you can have a chance at a normal life.
That was the start of many years of doctor visits, blood draws, massive amounts of drugs, and months of bed rest. And slowly I got better. I abandoned spicy food. I cut out as much stress as possible. I learned some pain mediation techniques. And I resigned myself to being 5″ shorter than God intended and to a lifetime of living with a chronic disease. Crohn’s has no known cure.
I lost the height, but something strange happened on the way to that lifetime of chronic illness.
When doing international adoptions, the child has to be tested. Immunizations are sporadic at best in third world countries. Typically they are fairly routine. One particular adoption wasn’t so routine.
Your daughter tested HIV+. It’s not uncommon for children to contract the virus. We’ll send the blood work off to lab in the US, but that’s just a formality. I’m really sorry.
We were crushed, as you can imagine. So, now what? We had to decide if we could parent an HIV+ child. Would our insurance cover the drugs? Would it put our other kids at risk? Suddenly, we were confronted by the prospect of our entire world being turned upside down.
Nothing in business compares to the devastating news that a child is sentenced to a lifetime of illness.
Let’s move on to Networks. Jack, what can you tell us about the network status for our new location?
Not good. We do not have routers available. In fact, they won’t even be arriving until after you want to start training. I’m really sorry. We’ll continue to look for options, but it looks like we may be the team to cause you to miss your date.
There it was. Not a “worst case” we might be late, “best case” we get the equipment on time. Simply a “It’s not going to happen.”
And then, the miracles occur. A supplier suddenly finds an extra set of routers that just happen to be the same kind that we need.
Another time, we were not going to have the circuits we needed in time. Best case was 2 months after we were scheduled to go live. And then, a couple weeks later, we discover that we don’t need to do any construction to link up to fiber. Two months becomes three weeks.
Not every project gets blessed by miraculous updates, but enough do that it pays to plan for the worst and hope for the best.
And that’s what happened with my daughter. We fasted and prayed as a family. Our friends and church members fasted and prayed and when the second set of tests came back, the results were negative. She no longer had HIV.
Some will insist that the fact that she doesn’t have HIV and the fact that there is no known cure for HIV means that she never had it in the first place. She was simply misdiagnosed. To those people I tell the story of my Crohn’s Disease.
I eventually got better. By the time I was in high school, I was attending school nearly fulltime. I stuck to my treatment and medications and worked by butt off to attempt to have a normal life. And it worked. I was able to go and serve a two year mission for my church when I turned 19. I was able to attend college without any special accommodations. In fact, the disease went into complete remission.
And then, I found myself working for Microsoft in a very stressful job. I didn’t like my boss (I Finally Put Down The Rock.) And I was struggling at my job. And the symptoms started to come back. Not terribly, just a tingling in my lower right side, brought on by my increased stress no doubt.
So, I went to see a specialist before things got really bad. To test for the severity of an intestinal issue, which Crohn’s is, they give you what’s called a “Barium milkshake.” (If you’re lucky you get the milkshake. If you are unlucky you get something less pleasant.) The milkshake tastes almost exactly like someone ground up chalk and mixed it with a small amount of water. . .but, not as tasty.
A week later I came back to get the results.
Mr. Bliss, your results are negative.
What do you mean?
I mean that you tested negative for Crohn’s. And since it is incurable, it’s my professional opinion that you never had Crohn’s to begin with. I don’t know what stresses you are under, but Crohn’s disease is not part of it.
Of course, Dr Lamb was amused to hear that diagnosis.
I cut you open. I saw the results. I don’t know why you don’t have it now, but I will stake my professional reputation on the fact that you had it when you were 13 years old.
Miracles happen. They can happen in our personal lives, the lives of our children and in our professional lives. The world is much more complex than we can ever hope to understand. It’s governed by forces that we can only dream of.
I’m grateful that my project was the beneficiary of miraculous scheduling changes. I’m grateful that my daughter no longer has HIV. And I’m grateful that I was spared a life sentence of a chronic illness. And for that, I’ll give up being tall.
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 one grandchild.
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Excuse me sir, are you here by yourself?
Yeah.
Big fan?
Sure. I love Billy Joel’s music.
You must be if you’re willing to sit in these seats. Would you be willing to exchange your ticket here in the nosebleed section for one on the front row?
Excuse me?
Yes, that conversation really happened. No, it didn’t happen to me. My wife and I were sitting a few rows in front of the guy. We were in the rafters of Seattle’s Key Arena. Billy Joel was touring, but didn’t have a new album out. We were just fans who wanted to come hear his old stuff. None of us were sure if the ticket offer was a scam or not. The man making the offer had a name badge, but he also had a scraggly goatee and multiple piercings.
The tech show promoter had a problem. Not enough people where signing up to attend his show in Sydney Australia. He had plenty of presenters, but the economy was down and he just wasn’t getting the number of attendees he needed.
He had a couple of options:
First he could lower the ticket prices. It’s always easier to raise your prices than lower them. If you raise prices on a service or product, your existing customers feel like they got a good deal and they feel smarter for getting in early. In addition, potential customers who are “on the fence” are more likely to buy. After all, the price might be higher next week. Better buy now.
When you lower your prices you have the opposite problem. First, your existing customers feel slightly cheated. After all, they paid more than the people buying right now. They might even come looking for a refund. And worse, the fence sitters might decide to wait even longer. After all, the prices came down once, maybe they’ll be lower next week.
So, lowering his prices was not something the promoter wanted to do.
Second, he could cancel the show. This really comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. He’d already paid out a bunch of money that he wasn’t going to get back. Would it be cheaper to cancel and lose all his deposits, or risk a half full show and only lose some of his money?
Also, his show was sponsored by his company. If you cancel a show, it makes people worry about the financial state of your company. Perhaps they were mistaken to invest in your products after all?
The promoter opted for a third strategy. He went to his management and told them they should give the show away for free. It would mean $50,000 in lost ticket sales. At first glance this strategy seems to fly in the face of the “don’t lower your prices” argument. It’s hard to get much lower than free.
The thing is, the promoter didn’t tell anyone he was giving the show away for free. To complete his deception he needed an accomplice. He went to one of his biggest sponsors.
I have a proposition for you.
We’re listening.
I’m going to give away free attendance to my show in Sydney.
Okay.
But, I don’t want people to think it’s a free show, or they will decide it’s not valuable.
Why tell us about this?
I want to announce that your company has offered to sponsor the show. That thanks to your generosity, all attendees will have their entrance fees paid by your company.
But it won’t cost us any extra?
Nope. You get tons of free publicity and goodwill, and I get a well attended show.
The show was “sold out.” Once people heard that the attendee fees were being sponsored, they rushed to sign up. It was first come first served. (Actually, it was open to as many people as wanted to attend, but the perception of limited number of tickets helped drive attendance.)
The show was an overwhelming success. The corporate “sponsor” was thrilled with the exposure they got. The promoter’s parent company lost out on some attendee revenue, but more than made up for it in product sales and positive perceptions.
What’s this story have to do with Billy Joel?
The offer was on the level. They guy exchanged his ticket with the man with the goatee and the piercings. A few minutes later we saw him sitting on the very front row. Even from 100 yards away his beaming smile was visible. And then I realized the brilliance of Billy Joel’s strategy.
His concerts at that time had the exact same price for every seat in the arena: first row, last row, both paid exactly the same price. So, if you were willing to pay full price and sit in the rafters, it meant you were a dedicated fan. If Joel could get those fans onto the front rows, he would be playing to his most devoted and passionate fans.
Most concerts have a tiered ticket price where the closer you are to the stage the higher the price. That means the people sitting closest are the most wealthy, not necessarily the most passionate. Joel, didn’t offer the first three rows for sale. Instead, he packed them with fans who would have been willing to sit in another county and listen.
He lost out on some money that he might have gotten from higher priced tickets, but on the plus side, he gets passionate fans at the stage edge. The fans in turn get the chance of a lifetime. It’s a positive experience all the way around.
I just wish the guy with the goatee had made the offer to my wife and me.
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 one grandchild.
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Red shirt.
What does it signify?
Make no mistake, more than any other piece of clothing a red shirt is symbolic, both good and bad. First let’s talk about the negative stereotypes. In the original Star Trek series, (referered to as TOS), each department had it’s own color of uniform. Command was gold. Captain Kirk wore gold. Science officers like Mr Spock and Doctor McCoy wore blue. And engineering, headed by Mr Scott, wore red. But, in addition to engineering, red was also worn by security. And it was the unfortunate security officers who turned “red shirt” into a synonym for someone who will soon die.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the 79 episodes of TOS 58 people died. Of that number 43 of them were wearing a red shirt. Most of the red shirts died without saying a word. Howard Tayler, of Schlock Mercenary fame created a character named Der Trihs.
(Photo Credit: Tayler Corporation)
Der Trihs is redshirt spelled backwards.
Red shirts are also associated with positive images. The most famous one is this image.
(Photo credit: Sasquatchfilms.net)
Tiger Woods is no longer the best golfer in the world. But, there was a time where you could make the following bet and get even money: Tiger Woods or anyone else. He literally took on the world. And on Sunday, Tiger always wore a red shirt. And it was part of the intimidation factor. Tiger Woods single handedly turned red shirt into a cool image.
Of course, part of the problem is that the nerds who watch Star Trek TOS probably weren’t big golf fans.
During my job as a manager over the monthly maintenance tasks at a large non profit, I wore a red shirt, (the one you see at the start of this post.) I never mentioned to anyone that I was specifically wearing the red shirt. It just became one of the symbols of our maintenance. Not unlike Red Tie Thursdays.
Today is Friday. And I’m also wearing a red shirt. The company I currently work for has a suggestion. . .in fact, a really strong recommendation that we wear red on Fridays to show support for our military. Red shirts can represent both incompetence and brilliance; disaster or dominance.
Clothes are symbolic. They can be uniting. And they can be a reminder that there are those who put themselves in harms way so we don’t have to. Our office will be a sea of red today. It’s a very inexpensive way to unite our team and honor a higher cause.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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As a member of Toastmasters, I have a chance to enter speaking contests. This is a speech I wrote for a Tall Tales contest. I won at the local level and at the district level. I have another contest at the end of the month.
“The Rubber Car” — A Tall Tale
I’ve recently been having some car trouble. The trouble is that people keep running into me. Oh, not hard or anything. Just little fender benders. . .dings on my door. . that sort of thing.
My mechanic has been very please with my misfortune. Sure, he draws a long face when I come in with another dent for him to bang out, but he sure cashes my checks right quick. But, finally, he came to me and said he thought he had a solution for me.
“It’s this new thing they’re just trying out called “rubber fenders.”
“Rubber fenders?”
“Yep, They replace your metal fender with a rubberized one. It’s made with a special process that let’s it keep it’s shape and hold the color. But, whenever someone bumps into you, it just springs right back. Like a rubber ball.”
“Okay, let’s give that a try.”
So, I came back a week later and got my car. Sure enough, the fender looked good as new. Jim grabbed a wrench and SMACKED the fender as hard as he could. The wrench just bounced off and not a single mark.
Well, this was great. I still got run into just as much, but before long, we’d replaced the entire body with these rubberized fenders and bumpers and such.
I began to notice a little bit of a problem though. Whenever I’d go over a large bump, like crossing railroad tracks for example, the car would bounce up and own something terrible.
“That’s just a result of all that rubber in the body,” Jim would tell me. And to tell you the truth, I sort of got used to it after a while. I even got to where I’d hit the gas a little right before the tracks, get a little airborne and then bounce on down the road for a good half mile or so.
Well, one day I was driving south down Geneva road in north Provo, and there’s some railroad tracks there about about 400 North, just before that big bridge they built to take you up and over Center street.
I guess I was gave it a little more gas than normal when I hit those tracks and when the car came back down, it stuck on something. That stopped me pretty quick too. I gave it some gas and it didn’t move. I tried reverse, same result. I was pretty thoroughly stuck on whatever had caught the bottom of my car. I thought about calling a tow truck, but that seemed a little silly if I was just high centered or something. I gave it some gas and I could hear the engine strain to pull me off whatever was catching. It’s a big powerful engine and front wheel drive.
I gave it even more gas. Now the engine was really straining but no luck. Even more and the front tires started to spin.
At this point it occurred to me that the car was made mostly of rubber and I was stretching it like a rubber band. I began to be a little worried what might happen if I stopped. The built up tension might throw the whole car backwards. I kept on the gas, even shifting in a higher gear. The tires were really smoking at this point, but I daren’t let up.
Glancing in the mirror, I could see the rear window getting further way. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear? Well, I was stretching that rubber. Have you ever snapped a rubber band back on yourself? Well that’s what I could imagine happening if I let off the gas. I poured it on even more. The wheels are spinning, smoke is billowing up, the speedometer is pegged out at 140 mph and the car was stretched out tighter than a guitar string.
Finally, just went I thought I’d have to back off or blow the engine
SNAP
I broke free of whatever I’d gotten hung up and all that built up tension flung my car down Geneva road faster than a speeding bullet. I was worried I might hit someone, but there was really nothing I could do but hold on. And then I hit that raised bridge over center street. That was just like a launching pad. My car hit the top going well over 200 mph and it launched me in the direction of Southern Utah.
You might think I’d die, but here’s where the beauty of the rubber car came in. When I came down, somewhere around Ephraim, I landed in a WalMart parking lot and WHOOSH! Bounced right back into the air. And that car kept bouncing all the way down I-15. Each bounce wasn’t quite as long as the last, but there was so much built up pressure that it carried me clear past Cedar City and into Nevada. I finally came to rest on the outskirts of Las Vegas.
I was pretty shaken up, as you can imagine. I climbed out of the car checked for damage. And that’s when I realized that my car looked slightly different. All that stretching back in Provo had lengthened the car. It was now a long as a stretch limo. Which was handy, me being in Vegas, it only took me a couple days of limo work to get the money to come back home.
My friends are all impressed. Neighborhood kids want me to drive them to prom. My mechanic wants to charge me for turning my car into a limousine. Personally, I’m just happy it was a front wheel drive. Had the same thing happened with a rear wheel drive car, all that pushing would have turned it into a Mini Cooper.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Ron Washington quit his job last Friday. He is a 62 year old black man who worked in Arlington, TX. He resigned his position as a manager.
Mr. Washington’s resignation made nationwide news. Not because he quit his job, but because in his company, there are 29 other managers and out of all of those employees, only one other person in his position is black. His company is working on trying to hire more black managers, but they haven’t been very successful at it.
Perhaps we should encourage more black kids to play catcher.
I’ve been in IT for over 25 years. In that time I’ve noticed there very few women and minorities in IT. I’ve sat through countless boring meetings in those 25 years. One of the games we’d play to try to pay attention was to recast the members of the meeting with hollywood actors and actresses, mostly actors. I always saw myself as Fred Savage of The Wonder Years.
(Photo Credit: imdb.com)
My friends said they thought of me more as the John Cusack type. (I liked my friends’ movie better!)
(Photo Credit: johncusack.net)
The real point was that the cast looked more like a buddy or sports movie than it did like a romantic comedy or a Julia Roberts film. Typically there were about 2 men for every one woman. In some Microsoft meetings the ratio was even higher.
When I ran RESMARK, we had 7 men and one woman. I would have been happy to hire more women. There just weren’t any.
In my Computer Science classes at BYU it wasn’t unusual to have less than 5% women in a typical class. I dated a girl in my CS 142 class. She finished her final semester project early and helped my roommate and me finish up ours. You could say we hit it off. We’ve been together ever since.
But, she was the exception that proved the rule.
How do we hire more female programmers? We get more women to graduate in computer science?
How do we get more women to graduate in computer science? We get more young women to go into computer science.
How do we get more young women to go into computer science? We get more girls interested in computers.
How do we get more girls interested in computers? We make math and science fun.
How do we make math and science fun? . . .I don’t know. I have 8 daughters. My wife studied computer science. My oldest daughter took the AP Calculus exam at 15 years old and got a 5.
Have you considered going into science?
Not really.
You can probably get scholarships to any school you wanted to attend if you majored in a science or math.
I’m good at math. . .I just don’t like it.
And she never took another math class. But, I still have hope for her younger sisters.
Ron Washington’s manager job? He was manager of the Texas Rangers baseball team. With Washington’s retirement, Lloyd McClendon the manager of the Seattle Mariners remains the only active Major League Baseball manager who is black. Black players make up 7.8% of the rosters of MLB teams. That’s down from a high of 27% in the late 1970’s.
How do we get more black managers? We get more black kids to play catcher. Seriously, catchers are over represented in MLB manager ranks. This despite the fact that there are some who suggest that catchers don’t make the best managers.
Interestingly, if your son is left handed, you probably don’t want to have him go into catching. Pretty much only one one professional catcher was left handed.
Have him be a pitcher. Good left handed pitchers are highly valued. And ironically, they also have a much higher winning percentage as managers than catchers, despite being fired sooner and having placed less than half as many of their ranks into the manager role. (See the link above.)
So, to get more black managers, recruit more right handed black kids to play catcher.
To get more women into IT isn’t quite so simple.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I’m sorry Mr Bliss, your boarding pass isn’t registering.
Huh?
You are not scheduled to be on this flight.
Ah. . .
Were you planning on going to Cleveland?
No. I’m headed for Salt Lake City. I’m just connecting through Cleveland. . .I think.
Let me see your ticket. You are connecting through Detroit. That’s gate E9 boarding in about 20 minutes.
Thanks.
It wasn’t totally my fault. The airport didn’t have anyone at the information booth. I asked a gate agent and they kind of nonchalantly directed me to gate E5, leaving for Cleveland at 5:05.
Had it not been for that boarding pass, I would have found myself in Ohio instead of Michigan without a connecting flight to Salt Lake. Anyone who’s been through security at an airport knows that the importance of having your boarding pass is only surpassed by the importance of having your ID.
So how important is your boarding pass?
It’s worthless.
As soon as you walk on that plane, it loses all value. Well, technically, it’s good for convincing the person who should be in 12C that they need to vacate 11C. But, the boarding pass goes from critically important to completely useless in the space of about 10 seconds.
I’m staying in Richmond Virginia for the week. Naturally I’m staying in a hotel. Hotel keys are intentionally anonymous. They provide no personal information. And yet the electronic encoding grants you access to your stuff and keeps everyone else away. . .except for the cleaning staff, but that’s really beside the point.
These items are very important, critical even. And yet when they outlive their usefulness they are worthless.
(Photo Credit: Mike Pennacchi)
Most places I’ve worked profess to believe “People are our most valuable asset.” On a couple of occasions my job has been eliminated and the company decided to keep my on the payroll until a new position opened up. It’s a smart move.
If I’d somehow ended up in Cleveland, a few hundred dollars would have set me on the path home again. During several layoffs I’ve witnessed companies layoff employees and only too late realize the employees have valuable information, information that would be really expensive to recreate. So, they end up hiring the employee back as a contractor at a higher salary.
Some things become worthless the moment they are done being used. People are not those things.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Can everyone do it?
I don’t know. I don’t even know how I do it.
I have a confession to make, Saturday night I stayed up almost all night. Seriously I was up until 4:00 AM. The problem was I had a flight leaving Salt Lake City Sunday morning, headed to Richmond, VA. The flight left at 9:30 AM. That may not sound particularly early, but you want to be there an hour early: 8:30. And I always park in off airport parking. It’s a lot cheaper, but requires another 15-20 minutes. Just to keep the math simple, let’s round it up to 30 minutes: 7:30 AM.i live roughly an hour from the airport: 6:30. Taking a quick shower before leaving means get up at 6:00 AM.
That’s what went through my head as I contemplated my clock at 4:00 AM. Do I just stay up? Do I head to the airport and sleep there? Or, do I go to bed and set my alarm for two hours?
I should point out that my lovely wife hates to be woken up in the middle of the night. Even one night of interrupted sleep makes her body I’ll. And on a Sunday morning, 6:00 AM qualifies as middle of the night.
I haven’t used an alarm clock in years. Well, not one that anyone else could hear.
It started when we were kids. My brother told me that he could just think of what time he wanted to wake up and he would. I tried it. I couldn’t make it work the first time. Or the second. But, eventually, I got to where I could wake up at a specific time. Okay, it was probably also because school was starting and I had to get up at the same time every morning. But, I was getting up at 4:30 to go to early morning seminary classes.
And later, I got better at it. I’ve never had trouble sleeping. I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and wake up when I need to.
Is it a marketable skill? Not really. I can just see it, “Come watch me fall asleep and wake up on cue!” But, it is one of the skills that we pick up along the way and later find come in handy. Like the guy who can add numbers in his head, or the woman who can make everyone feel at ease.
We all have skills, talents that help us be better at our jobs. And the ability to wake up after two hours was definitely a help.
You might be wondering what kept me up so late. Grapes. Once again we had bushels of Concord grapes. (The Broken Jar.) I had 5 bushels that we picked Saturday afternoon. They wouldn’t last the week that I was going to be gone. We typically get 2-3 gallons per bushel. A juicer can process a gallon per hour.
Fortunately, I have friends who also like homemade grape juice. Three juicers and and a three gallon per hour output. Add in some setup and some cleanup time and I’m smelling like a winery.
Besides, I knew I’d have a cross country plane trip to sleep. Fortunately I can fall asleep anywhere.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I was 16 years old all over again taking my driving test.
Okay, check mirrors. . .check.Seatbelt. . .check
Lights on for safety. . .check.
Start the car. . .started.
Radio, off. . .click.
Slowly back out, checking both directions.
Shift into Drive and slowly accelerate.
No, it wasn’t the onset of early senility. It’s just that I’d fallen off the driving horse and I was very hesitant about climbing back on. Yesterday, I talked about Things That Go Bump. . .at 75 MPH. And, while everything turned out okay, other than the fact that my 45 minute commute took 5 hours, the gravity of the situation wasn’t lost on me.
Let’s face it, I was probably about 3 miles (that’s about 2.5 minutes at 70 MPH) away from having all 5 studs on my wheel break off. And at 70 MPH on a freeway during rush hour, the odds of a major accident were pretty high.
I like older cars. I even like working on older cars, although I’m not a particularly gifted mechanic. I have a well-stocked garage. My grandfather was a junk dealer and I inherited his tools when he passed away. But, the problem with older cars is that they breakdown, and not always at the most convenient times. The idea that rather than towing my car home on a U-Haul car dolly, they might have been hauling it off on a flatbed tow truck was just a little frightening.
Let’s veer back into the business world for a moment. How to you overcome that fear? I had an unfortunate string at one point in my career where I got fired from three jobs in a row; jobs I really liked and I wanted to keep. Emotionally, I was a wreck. My confidence was shot. I was scared to go get another job, because I thought “If I don’t have a job, no one can fire me.” It’s very difficult to interview with confidence when you’re emotionally hoping you don’t get the job. And it showed. I went through a period where I was being turned down even for interviews for jobs that I was abundantly qualified for.
Obviously, I got over it. And I got over it the same way you get past any scary situation, I faced it head on. I went out and started my own business. Not because I thought my little consulting business would totally support my family, but because working is better than not working. I got some freelance writing gigs, because writers write. I got some short term consulting gigs. They didn’t all go great (Your Bill Is HOW Much?) But, I was working. And while I was working I rediscovered something I already knew, I am really good at what I do.
I’m not bragging. If you’ve read my postings over the past couple of years, I should realize that I try to give away as much credit as I can (Tell Them It’s All About You. Make It All About Them.) But, we all have things we do well. As I worked my way back into the workforce, I rediscovered my strengths. And as I rediscovered my confidence, I started to interview better. Eventually, I was interviewing for a job that I was superbly qualified for. I got the job. It was a long term consulting gig. And then I got an even better job that was fulltime with health insurance benefits. (Always a consideration when you have a house full of kids.)
And now I’m to the point where I have a job I love and fortunately my boss thinks I do a good job. My clients seem to appreciate the work I do. But, getting here has been a journey of little, sometimes tiny, steps. At times it was all I could do to just fill out a job application. Other times just getting out of the house to attend a networking event was terrifying.
Nothing breeds success like success.
One of the benefits of that down period of my life (Much of which is chronicled in the five day series found here) is that I now understand that I can do hard things. I can take a punch, because life hit me in the gut pretty hard. I fell down, but I got up again. Maybe I was a little shaky on my feet afterward, but I’m not one of those to roll over and give up. We all like to believe that about ourselves. And I would never want anyone to have to go through that process. But, finding out that you are made of sterner stuff is reassuring.
I cringed as I made the first turn. So far so good. I moved from surface streets to the freeway. Still no unusual noises. I started to breathe a little easier. I have really learned to love this car. It still has its share of rattles and hums, but they are familiar rattles and hums. No doubt at some point in the future it will have another issue. But, having come through this issue, I’m more confident that I can make it through the next one. I can take a punch.
Today’s post marks the 400th entry on the www.staging.rodneymbliss.com blog. Thanks to all of you for reading along.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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It was a gorgeous day. About 90 degrees with clear skies. I was able to leave work after only nine hours, rather than the ten to twelve hour days of last week.
I enjoy driving with the windows down, even on the freeway. Sure, the noise is terrible, and you pick up a fair amount of diesel exhaust, but if you turn the radio up loud enough you can still mostly hear the songs.
Except this one had a kind of strange beat to it. Sort of a THUNK-A, THUNK-A, THUNK-A. And then I realized that over the road noise and the radio and wind, I was hearing another sound. And it was not a good sound.
I pulled over to the side of the freeway. . .kind of. The shoulder was about two feet wider than my car. The THUNKING had come from the right front tire area. The cement jersey-barrier kept me from going too far off the road. As I got out to try to figure out what was wrong, I was no longer quite so accepting of the noise and the diesel fumes. Especially when the diesels spewing the exhaust were rumbling by doing 75 MPH about three feet away from me.
I found a piece of the inside wheel well cowling that was rubbing on the tire. A piece of rope out of my fishing gear which I always keep in the trunk and I was good to go. . .about another hundred feet. More THUNKING. I noticed a wide spot where another freeway merged with the 201 that I was on. Slowly, with my flashers on, I crept down to the wide spot. At this point I noticed it was more of a rattle than a thunk. I also realized I probably knew what it was.
I should give some context here. I drive a gold Lexus. That name probably brings a particular image to mind, just as Toyota hoped it would. But, not every Lexus is created equal. Mine is a 1996 ES300, that could charitably be described as “needs a little work.” (Free Like A Puppy.)
I’m certainly not complaining. This puppy gets double the milage my Suburban got. On way too many Saturdays you can find me with the car jacked up in the garage and a neighbor allowing me to “help” them fix whatever is broken. We spent more time last weekend working on my car. We replaced the line that connects the power steering pump to the fan (I don’t know either) replaced an engine mount and replaced about a dozen lightbulbs including adding those really annoying “blue” headlights.
In the process we had to remove the right front tire. The same area that was now making some very unfriendly noises.
I should mention that I have a kind of phobia about the wheels falling off my car.
Back in college I drove a 66 Mustang. I loved that car, but it was a piece of junk. One day while turning right, I noticed a tire go rolling out in front of my car. I recognized it just before my axle hit the ground. Broken spindle. And it was the right front.
When I was about 14 I helped my brother work on his car. We took it out for a test drive and a wheel went rolling by. AND the drum hit the pavement.
Did you tighten those lug nuts?
Yeah, as tight as I could with my fingers.
I don’t remember if it was the right front, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say probably (at least a 25% chance!)
I limped to the side of the freeway yesterday. I discovered the problem just as my boss called. Apparently my at risk project is competing with several other at risk projects for network resources. He wanted to know if my project plan was up to date and what was the latest I could wait to get my routers?
It was a bit of a surreal call.
In the midst of a crisis, life goes on.
I was just finishing up that call when the highway patrolman knocked on my window. Apparently they really want you to not park on the side of the freeway.
Is it drivable?
If I take it slow.
Can you get to 33rd?
I’ll try.
And I did. With grinding the entire way. I was in the worst possible spot for a breakdown. About 2 miles from the nearest exit. And then another mile to the Maverick Store.
The one at the corner of 900 West and 3300 South.
According to Google it was about 3.2 miles from the spot I met the cop to the Maverick. And along the way, I broke another one. Here’s what my right front wheel looks like.
Take a closer look at those lug nuts.
Notice how some of them are missing? Yeah, these three.
Those are aluminum alloy wheels. Our best guess is that after working on it on Monday we tightened the lug nuts, but then didn’t tighten them again 50 miles later. It’s a manufacturers recommendation that I will be following strictly going forward.
I’m reminded of a very old, only slightly funny joke.
On an airline flight the captain came on the announcement and stated, “Folks, we lost an engine. It’s okay we can fly on three, but we will be delayed an extra hour.” A few minutes later he’s back on the speaker. “Not sure how this happened, but we’ve lost another engine. Not to worry, we can fly safely on two, but it will delay us another hour.” And then a few minutes later. “I don’t want to alarm you folks, but we have had another engine fail. Don’t worry, we can run on a single engine, but we will be getting into our destination another hour later. One passenger turned to his seatmate and said, “If we lose that 4th engine, we’ll be up here all day.”
That’s how I felt about my broken lug nuts.
Remember my Smack It With A Hammer neighbor? Yeah. Still my neighbor. He rented a car dolly, drove 45 minutes to come pick up my car. Then, he and his lovely wife who had come with him endured a tortuous 30 mile drive that took about 2 hours, as we drug the puppy home to my house.
We bought some new studs and this evening we’ll be jacking up the car and pounding out the broken studs and putting the puppy back to together.
There’s a business lesson in here somewhere but I sure can’t find it. I was reminded of some other other breakdowns (What Would You Do? On A Long Lonely Highway With A Dead Car A Young Child And Night Falling?) , and since the wheel didn’t actually separate from the car, it’s a fairly mild issue.
The worst part? While parked on the side of the freeway, I forgot to listen for my car to be called out on the traffic reports!
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on
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Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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In a word: No. If you put it online, it’s public.
There were two data breaches over the weekend. One of them got all the press, but really had no impact on my life. The second got a small blip, but will probably be much more impactful, not just for me, but for many people than the first.
Okay, let’s address the first one. You know what it is. I know you know it, and you know that I know that. . .or something like that.
Someone hacked in and stole, and that’s what it was, it was theft. . .stole a bunch of naked pictures of celebrities. It’s brings up a couple of questions.
First is how did he (why are we all agreed it was a “he”?) accomplish it? Apple is saying that their iCloud service wasn’t hacked. Some of the actresses involved, (and again, it’s all women who were targeted, more evidence of a male crook) claim that the pictures were only in the possession of one other person, their boyfriend.
These women have been victimized and no doubt traumatized. I don’t want to attack them, but they are wrong. The photos were not only in the possession of one other person. The photos were undoubtedly stored in a cloud storage service and therefore they were accessible by any number of people.
My mother owns several original oil and water color paintings. One of my favorites is what we call “The Kite” picture.
This is my limited edition numbered print.
It’s about 8×10 and hangs in my kitchen. The original is about 3 feet by 5 feet and hangs in my mother’s home office. This picture exists many places; in my print, and the prints my siblings got, in the digital copy I just made of my print, in the file sharing system I use to share photos between my various devices, and of course, in her office. The painting itself, being a physical object only exists in one location.
But, pictures, just like the one I’ve taken, NEVER exist in only one spot. But, what if they only exist on my phone? Unless you have a magic phone that doesn’t connect to a mobile network, the pictures on your phone are in the cloud. But, what if they only exist on my home computer? Great, how did you get them there? Chances are you either took them on a cell phone (already covered) or you are backing up your PC to the cloud, or your computer is accessible from a network. Maybe not. Maybe you have a standalone PC that doesn’t connect to the internet or to a network and you only take pictures from a digital camera with no wifi abilities and you manually transfer your pictures through a USB cable.
Good for you. You are secure. For the rest of us, everything is online in one form or another. And I’m not trying to scare anyone. Because ALL of our stuff is online, there is a certain level of security through obscurity. If your name isn’t Jennifer Lawrence people are not going to be hacking you as aggressively. (If your name IS Jennifer Lawrence, I’m totally excited that you are reading my blog. . .and very, very sorry that your pictures got hacked.)
We will eventually know how the thief got access to the pictures. That leads to the second point: why? If you know that your digital life is hackable, why put this stuff out there? Dallas Mavericks owner, billionaire Mark Cuban is currently trying to scale back his digital footprint. Being Mark Cuban he created a company to help him: Cyber Dust.
I don’t take naked pictures of myself. So the idea of them leaking is not something I worry about. But, I have 13 kids. those kids each have their whole lives in front of them. I’ve tried to make sure that my online postings don’t touch them.
This won’t be the last time famous people have images or conversations they wanted kept private made public. And who knows, maybe this will inspire some people to remove information from the internet, or better yet, never store it there in the first place. But, realize everything is accessible eventually.
And that second data breach over the weekend? Home Depot, a store I spent way too much time and money at, was hacked, possibly for months, and exposed millions of credit card numbers. Like I said, everything is accessible at some point.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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