Rodney M Bliss

August 28, 2020

Life And Death Of Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson died today. . .again.

I was sad when COVID cancelled baseball games on April 15. On that day in 1947 a young rookie named Jackie Robinson stepped in to play 1st base for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the era of integrated baseball had begun.

Robinson was a rare talent. He won Rookie of the Year honors and today the award is named in his honor. An even greater honor is that every year on April 15, every baseball club wears #42. Not just one player, but every player, every manager, every coach. They all put on number 42, “so we can’t tell them apart.”

Robinson’s number 42 has been retired by every baseball club in the Major Leagues. No MLB player will ever again wear number 42. The last one to wear it was the great Mariano Rivera. He is the only player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame unanimously. Not even the great Jackie Robinson earned that honor. He earned 78% of the vote on the first ballot.

Baseball decided that Jackie Robinson day wasn’t something that we had to miss this year. Sure, we can’t hold it on the anniversary of his first game. Instead it was held today August 28.

I’m not sure if MLB picked this date on purpose. But, in 1968, 21 years after Robinson made his MLB debut, on August 28, another black man stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and told us that he had a dream for America.

Yes, today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech. It’s one of the greatest speeches ever spoken. It’s so much more than the “I have a dream” phrase. It speaks of a check that America wrote to its black citizens. And that check came back marked Insufficient Funds.

MLK’s soaring oratory takes us from the hills of Stone Mountain, GA, to Colorado, to New York. It’s a speech full of hope. Yes, and dreams, but mostly a call to action to be better than we have been.

Today is the anniversary of that speech, the culimination of his March on Washington.

It seems fitting that MLB would choose today to honor Jackie Robinson. His leadership helped Major league baseball integrate decades before the rest of the country followed suit.

It was nice to see the Mariners and the California Angels take the field today all wearing 42 with no names.

And if that’s all that happened today, it would be a great day to remember baseball, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King. Perhaps, I’d compare Doctor King’s quest for racial justice with today’s Black Lives Matter movement.

But, it’s not all that happened.

The movie “42” was one of the most entertaining Jackie Robinson movies. The brilliant actor Chadwick Bosemann played Robinson and he literally become the great ball player. He movements, even how he dangled his fingers before stealing a base.

It was a masterful movie and Bosemann did an equally masterful job.

Today, at the age of 42, Chadwich Bosemann died. Jackie was a few years older at 53 when he died of a heart attack. It was colon cancer that killed Bosemann.

He is probably best known for his role in Black Panther. But, to me he will always be the person who allowed me to watch Jackie Robinson.

RIP Jackie, and Bosemann.

Stay safe

August 27, 2020

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I don’t get sick. Not often anyway. But, there’s more than one kind of sick.

I get stressed. I go to therapy.

Some days I get more stressed than normal.

Today is one of those days.

Stay safe

August 26, 2020

Why Isn’t It Done Yet?

I broke something today. It was a small thing. I went to tip over a piece of the engine I was working on and the cam shaft fell out. That might not be so bad. Cam shafts are cast steel. They are pretty tough. And actually the break was a tiny thing. Just a small piece of metal on the end of the cam shaft. It’s about the size of quarter. It’s a piece that keeps the cam shaft in sync.

It screws onto the end of the cam shaft. Replacing it takes just a few seconds.

But, there’s a problem. I didn’t have it.

I’ve spent the last few weeks rebuilding the engine on my daughter’s 2003 Kia Rio. I’m just rebuilding the top end; the valves. I took the aluminum head to a machine shop to be retooled.

I got it back this week. I started the install on Monday. It’s actually going reasonably well. It’s a not like replacing an alternator or a starter. There are multiple gaskets to be replaced, and specific torque settings for the head bolts and manifolds.

And then there was a small problem. Literally a tiny problem. When a head gets redone in a machine shop they clean up all the pieces and use precise equipment to make sure that every piece of the head lines up perfectly and that the surfaces are exactly smooth.

Except it wasn’t. One of the lifters wouldn’t fit back into the head. There was a very small nick in the side of the hole it was supposed to fit into. And that was where my repair came to a screeching halt.

Literally, I cannot go one step further. I’m in the middle of open heart surgery and I ran out of. . .I don’t know. . blood? Scalpels? Screws? Maybe this wasn’t the best analogy.

So, I had to make a trip back to the machine shop. It would be easier if I could take the head with me. But, I’ve already secured it to the block with new head bolts. The bolts are special. they have to be installed in a specific manner. You screw them in and then tighten them to 36 ft lbs. It takes a special wrench called a troque wrench. It can measure the each force, or torque placed on a bolt. Once you’ve tightened the bolts to 36 ft lbs, you then loosen then. Next, they get tightened to 18 ft lbs. Of course, that’s a lot less and barely more than you could tighten them with your fingers. The final step is you mark each bolt and give them a 90 degree turn. This tightens them up to about 50 ft lbs.

The problem is that you can’t reuse them if you take them out. The process stretches them out. If I were to take the head off, I’d have to order new head bolts.

It was about this time that I had my unfortunate fumble. So, in addition to a trip to the machine shop I also needed a trip to the junk yard.

Fortunately, it’s a lot easier to pull a cam shaft out of a junk car than from a car you want to put back together. So, I spent this afternoon going back over work I’d already done.

Oh, and while I was at it I stopped by to pick up a new thermostat and spark plugs.

So, instead of spending the day putting the car back together I spent it redoing work that was already done once. And why did I lose a day? It wasn’t a big thing, it wasn’t a big thing. It was a small, even a tiny thing and then another.

Stay safe

August 25, 2020

Life Is Precious

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that Life Is Fatal. Like the Mrs Packard character in Disney’s Atlantis stated:

Ironic that I should write that yesterday. As you may have noticed if you’ve frequented these pages for very long, I typically write each day as the inspiration strikes. Sometimes I have an idea well in advance of what I want to say. Other times inspiration strikes as I put my hands to the keybaord.

Yesterday’s post warned against clinging to life too tightly. Don’t be so afraid of dying that you forget to live.

And then today happened. Today a dear friend in a state 1000 miles away was found unconscious at the foot of his stairs. He’d been there at least a day.

Tonight he’s in the ICU clinging to life. We don’t know if he’ll live or die. He hasn’t regained consciousness. He’s also diabetic. We don’t know how long he was laying there at the foot of his stairs. Was it long enough for his blood sugar to drop too low?

And now my words from yesterday sound hollow. Callous even. And, of course, guilt. Did I reach out to him enough? Was this a suicide attempt, or an unfortunate fall by an older man who lived alone?

So many questions. And the person who can answer them is lying in a medically induced coma in the ICU.

Yes, Life is Fatal. It’s important to embrace life. But, life is also precious. And we never know when our friends might be taken from us without a moment’s notice.

Stay safe

August 24, 2020

Life Is Fatal

Do you know why we call someone a Methusela? He’s a character from the Bible. He was Noah’s grandfather. Yes, Noah, of the Ark fame. Methusela was said to have lived 969 years. Some people think that Methusela’s failure to reach the millenia mark had a religious context.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve were told that in the day they partook of the fruit they would surely die. Later there’s a reference that a day to the Lord is 1000 years to us. So, if the people would die within a day and a day was 1000 years, then everyone had to die within 1000 years.

By the way, that previous paragraph is a terrible mishmash of various religious theories and beliefs.

The point is that Methusela, if he lived was a very old man. Oh, one more thought old people in the bible. If you read through Genesis, people born before the flood lived for centuries. People born after the flood lived much shorter lives.

The oldest person in modern times was a woman named Jeanne Calment. She was from France. She was born in 1875 and died 122 years and 164 days later. As humans, our average lifespan is 79 years. Scientists recently concluded that on average people can only live for about 115 years.

Science is making advances. And who knows but that my grandkids will easily eclipse the century mark or more?

But, unless we finally manage to upload our consciousness into a computer, we are all going to die.

It’s not a pleasant thought. Even for a person of faith, the thought of leaving everyone and everything can be frightening.

And yet, we can find inspiration in Hoffman’s quote. I worked with whitewater rafting companies for many years. Rafting can be a dangerous sport. People die every year. I owned a t-shirt on etime that said,

Rafting guides suggest that if you don’t have a chance of dying it’s not a true sport. They pretty much don’t count anything as a sport other than rafting, skiing, hang gliding, skydiving, racing. I’m not sure, but I think bear wrestingly qualifies.

Not everyone needs to risk death to enjoy life. But, we can also not allow fear of death to prevent us from living life.

William Wallace, the great Scottish freedom fighter is credited with saying,

And Shakespeare gave us the immortal lines,

So, enjoy life. Take risks once in a while. Don’t let fear of death keep you from life.

Oh, and Stay safe

August 21, 2020

Smoke But No Fire

The weather was terrible today. Sure, it’s been hot, but today was different. Today, our normally beautiful valley was shrouded. It’s about 20 miles from one side of the valley to the other. Much of that area is occupied by Utah Lake. It’s the largest non-dam controlled lake in the Western United States.

The Wasatch mountains are on the Eastern side of the valley. The Oquirrh Mountains are to the West. (Pronounced ‘OAK-er’) Today, it was impossible to see past the lake shore. It might have even been pretty if it weren’t, well, so ugly.

It’s smoke. Wildfire smoke. But, it’s not from a Utah fire. We’ve had a few this year. But, this was a lot bigger than our little 50 acre Battle Creek fire from last week. The fires were also not from the state next to us, Nevada. Instead they are coming from California, over 600 miles away.

The Southeast United States, Florida, Georgia area had a dust storm earlier this year. The dust wasn’t from the US, or even the Caribbean. Instead the dust had travelled 4,000 miles from Western Africa.

On May 18, 1980 a mountain in Southwest Washington exploded. Mount Saint Helens sent a plume of ash 15 miles into the air. I lived just a few hundred miles North of Mt Saint Helens. I remember watching the eruption from our front porch. It was a Sunday morning. The ash was over a foot deep in Eastern Washington. The ash eventually landed on our cars in Olympia, Washington. But, not 15 inches. In fact, not even an inch. Instead it was just a dusting. The ash didn’t reach our town until it had travelled around the world, 20,000 miles.

When we look around ourselves we see challenges and opportunities. The smoke, the dust, the ash are the challenges. They obscure our vision of the opportunities. They keep us from seeing the lake or the mountains clearly. And they often are not even a result of our own circumstances.

COVID is a challenge. But, not one of us was connected with the start of it.

And you and I each have our own challenges. Maybe it’s a family situation. Maybe it’s loss of a job. Maybe it’s a health crisis.

The point is that the causes might be thousands of miles away, but they keep us from taking advantage of the opportunities that exist right across the valley, if we could only see them clearly.

The thing is, I know the Oquirrh Mountains are just across the valley even if I cannot see them. And I know if I start heading west, despite the smoke, if I set my compass and head that direction, eventually, I’ll reach the goal.

Just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Sometimes you have to walk by faith.

Stay safe

August 20, 2020

Following The Zoom Crowd

It’s a typical meeting. The invitation arrives through email. At the appointed time you click on the link and then you are presented with that message.

What do you choose?

My default choice is NO. In fact, it’s not just that I say no. I don’t trust video. In fact, by default my camera is turned to face away from me. Oh, and it’s unplugged.

On my iPad I put tape over my camera. I have no evidence that my cameras have ever been hacked. But, I can guarantee that if they are, the hacker will see the back of a post it note. Or the wall. Or the camera on my laptop that is closed and locked into a docking station.

All I know is that I won’t be showing up on video unexpectedly.

But, what about a Zoom meeting? Do you join with or without video?

I’ve realized a unspoken cultural norm in my company. And it extends beyond my company as well. It’s a cultural habit that many of us have subconsiously adopted. If I log into a meeting where no one is using video, I won’t use video. However, if I log into a meeting where people are using video, I’ll turn my camera on.

I’m not a fan of video conferences. There is an argument that video conferences simulate actual meetings. They don’t, of course. I would guess that before the pandemic hit, your day began with a shower. Perhaps a shave. You probably got dressed and headed to work.

None of us miss the commute. But, our days often beginning differently now. Some people shower in the afternoon. Some choose to work in their pajamas. In fact, even with video conferences, many choose to not wear pants. Sweat pants, shorts, pajama pants.

And when we participate in those video conferences, unlike meetings, we each have a different background. We each have different dress standards. And in a meeting, a real life meeting, we each spend a lot of time not looking at each other. But, in a video conference, it always feel awkward to stare or be stared at.

I wonder as we become more used to online meetings if we will develop protocols. Rules for how to have these meetings. I was in one recently that asked us to install a particular virtual background. My computer couldn’t install the background. A couple of us couldn’t so the “group picture” didn’t have the uniformity that they desired.

In the meantime we’ll decide each time we log into a meeting if it’s going to be one of “those” meetings.

Stay safe

August 19, 2020

That Tiny Difference. . .Or, I’m Not That Great

CLANG

The pick bounced off the bottom of the small trench I was digging. It was supposed to be dirt. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t a rock. As near as I could tell, it was concrete. And it stretched the entire length of my trench.

I alternated between the pick and a 40 lbs pry bar with a pointed end. I’d raise the bar about a 12 inches, aim it at the bottom of the trench and throw it down. It also clanged off the bottom.

Installing sprinklers wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Actually, I wasn’t installing the sprinklers. That was my neighbor. He gets paid to install sprinkler systems. It’s the perfect time of year for him. He is constantly turning away work, he’s so busy.

He’s doing us a favor. He does a lot of favors for people. This one is taking more time than he, or we expected. My neighbor is great at design. My family and I are the brute force labor. My lovely wife, my two son, my daughters, and of course, myself. We have spent the week digging trenches, digging out sprinkler heads and digging spaces for new filters and new circuits.

My neighbor used paint to mark out the digging we needed to do. And we dutifully dug where he’d pointed us. He then came over and installed the parts of the sprinkler system.

But, here’s the thing. Even after you do the initially digging, there’s plenty of additional work to do. Hard brute work. My neighbor comes by in the evening, after he’s already worked a full day. After all, he’s not getting paid for my lawn. He still needs to make a living.

And when he shows up, I go to work as well. He tells me where he wants a deeper trench, or a wider box, or simply asks me to hold a pipe while he glues it together.

And that’s it. When you consider that he is the one helping me, and giving me the benefit of his expertise, I figured the least I could do was be out there to help. And by help, I mean dig.

Today, it wasn’t so much digging as stonebreaking. Progress was measured in inches. Inches down into the concrete and inches along the trench.

It was hot. Today it was over 104. By the time we started working in my yard it had cooled down to 98. And while there is some shade in my yard, quite a lot, actually, that shade isn’t where I needed the trench. That was full sun.

But, it had to be done. The trench was too shallow to install the new sprinkler heads. There really was no other option. And it’s not like I wasn’t making any progress. It was slow, but it wasn’t at a standstill.

But, something was happening that I hadn’t expected. For some reason my neighbor decided that I was an extraordinarily hard worker. At first I thought he was joking. We’ve been neighbors a long time. We have children the same age. Many of our kids have had the same challenges. We share a similar sense of humor.

I passed off his praise as simple teasing. And then another neighbor walked by and he did it again. My lovely wife came to check our progress and he said it again.

But, I wasn’t doing anything extraordinary. Sure, it was hard, even brutal work, but I did it for a couple of hours. Not like I had to stand out there all day.

It occured to me that my neighbor may not be used to getting much help, or any help. It is a small line that separates the extraordinary and the ordinary.

I was reminded again today, just how small.

Stay safe

August 18, 2020

But What Do You Do When There Is No Solution?

I’m good at my job. I’m not the best Technical Program Manager, but I’m certainly good at what I do. My background is Computer Science and writing.

People bring me problems. And they expect me to solve them. But, I have a secret. There is literally only one problem I can solve.

I can reset a password and unlock an account. That’s it. And that doesn’t come up very often considering it’s not my normal job.

More often the problems are more complex. But, people still bring them to me. The people bringing me the problems know I cannot solve them. They expect me to find someone to solve it.

And I’m good at finding people. I spend much of my time cultivating relationships. Sure, people are responsible who are supposed to help me. But, the old saying is you get more bees with honey than vinegar.

I’ve never understood that saying. Bees make the honey. But, anyway, my point is that I work with many different people. My job is easier if they like me and want to help me.

And I’ve had to solve many problems in my current role. Sometimes, the solutions are easy. (Note the password change.) Sometimes they require a lot of planning. We just wrapped up a six month project to update software on our agents’ home computers. It was long and complex. Fortunately, a brilliant engineer found an innovative solution that worked well.

Other times the problems require communication. I’m the technical link between the client and my company. There are many times I need to communicate back and forth. Sometimes it’s technical information. Sometimes it’s unpleasant information.

So far, there’s always been a solution. But, now what? I have a problem. It’s a technical problem. The Operations team brought the problem to me. I worked on it. I got other teams to help me work on the issue. Everyone who has offered help.

So far, we haven’t found a solution. Operations teams aren’t technical teams. They do a great job of tracking the issues, but they can’t fix it. That’s what they expect me to do.

But, really, now what? I have to believe that if we work the issue long enough a solutions will be found. Must be found. However, I have to think to myself, what I, we, don’t?

Do I have to win every round? Am I only as good as my last victory? My last clever solution? Does it even mean I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing? Am I even good at my job? If I am good at my job, why can’t I solve this?

What about the doubts? Is it Imposter Syndrome?

Should I have meetings? How many times can I meet with Operations and tell them I still haven’t found a solution? Or should I not hold meetings? Am I simply dodging the issue if I don’t discuss it with my Operations team?

And what about my technical teams? How many meetings can I have with them where they tell me they still don’t know the answer?

I remember taking advanced physics in college. Occasionally doing the homework, I would be stumped. No matter how much I searched the material, I simply couldn’t find the answer. And ultimately I gave up.

And that was when I looked in the back of the book. Every even numbered question had a posted answer.

If only real life were that simple.

Stay safe

August 17, 2020

Everybody Talks About It. . .

Tomorrow the forecast in Pleasant Grove is for 101 degrees. The Google app that gives me weather forecasts estimates it will be 4 degrees hotter than today. That means today was 96 degrees.

I drove past the high school today. The high school has a thermometer. It read 102.7. I’ve never understood why the public thermometers show us the fractions. I mean, why? Can anyone really tell the difference between 102.7 and 102? For that matter, can you really tell the difference between 102 and 103?

It’s just hot.

I spent some time outside today. We are redoing our sprinkler system. It’s requiring a lot of digging. Hundreds of feet of 8-12″ deep 6″ wide GI Joe sized trenches. The final one was about 60 feet along the driveway. Our ground has a lot of clay in it. Clay without water is basically a brick. Ever try to dig through a brick?

We ran a lot of water over our yard, especially on the areas we were trenching. We ran water down the edge of the driveway several times. Today, I spent about an hour under the 102 degree sun. We now have a trench 8-12″ deep, 6″ wide down the edge of the driveway.

I’m also in the middle of rebuilding the engine in my daughter’s Kia. Her car is actually in the way. We piled dirt on the driveway. It’s almost enough to take the place of the jack stands.

A car repair has three stages:

Disassembly
Repair
Reassembly

I’m discovering that sprinkler work is the same say. Digging the trenches is the disassembly. And often disassembly is the longest part. Now that we’re done with the digging, my neighbor will install the new sprinkler heads, the pipes, the filter (we never had one before) and a new hose bib.

After the repair is done, comes reassembly. When we dug the trenches, we cut the sod and folded the sod back. We then dug out the dirt and put it on the opposite side of the trench from the sod.

Reassembly will happen after the pipes get put in place. It should only be a couple of days. We’ll be back out in the sun. And that’s what has me thinking about weather. The app for the ten day forecast shows those bright sun bursts as far out as the app can see. If the forecast was 96, but it was actually 102, and tomorrow’s forecast is 101 that means it will probably be closer to 105 or 106.

And it will be under that shining ball of flame, 93 million miles away, but just over my head.

Everyone talks about the weather but no one every does anything about it.

Stay safe

Rodney M Bliss

Life And Death Of Jackie Robinson

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Why Isn’t It Done Yet?

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Life Is Precious

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Life Is Fatal

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Smoke But No Fire

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Following The Zoom Crowd

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That Tiny Difference. . .Or, I’m Not That Great

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But What Do You Do When There Is No Solution?

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Everybody Talks About It. . .

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