I stood on the side of a mountain propped up by my walking stick. The stick was the only thing keeping me upright. I was wheezing and fighting to fill my lungs with the thin air at 6500 feet.
It wasn’t just the thin air. After all, I live at 5000 feet above sea level. It was the weeks in quarantine, but also the sedetary lifestyle that a computer guy naturally settles into. Oh, and middle-age didn’t help.
But, here I was striving to pull my overweight body and a pack that felt about 20 lbs heavier than it had when I left home, up a mountainside. Not exactly a mountainside. More a canyon. But, mountainside or canyonside, the hike was killing me. . .slowly. Like over years.
Not a lot of people were out hiking Grove Creek Canyon on a Thursday afternoon. The trail behind me was empty, snaking along the side of the canyon. Ahead of me the trail wound around a bend in the trail.
The bend in the trail had been my goal. I figured I was maybe 50 feet from it when my legs and lungs decided I should take yet another break. I would later calculate that my hiking speed was 1.5 MPH on the trip up the canyon.
But, I wasn’t alone on this hike. Somewhere up ahead were two of my sons. I announced I was making “the baldy hike” and asked who wanted to go with me. My daughter had to work. Another daughter wasn’t much of a hiker. One son had another conflict. That left my oldest son and my second youngest.
The thing is, one son is 20 years old and was always athletic. The other son is 17 and is an athlete. He will be playing Varsity cornerback on his 6A High School football team in the fall. That’s assuming there is a football season in the fall.
The point is that, my two sons could have jogged up this trail, despite it being 4 miles long and over 1500 feet in elevation change. And they were somewhere up ahead. Possibly far ahead by this point.
My pulse was back down in the normal range and my lungs were no longer on fire. I took a step up the slate covered path. The path at this point was barely wide enough for one person. On a clear day, there was no trouble staying on the path.
We’d made this trip multiple times. My 17 year old son first made the hike when he was 12 years old. It wasn’t a clear day that day. It was in May, but not the warm Spring day we enjoyed today. That day, it was raining. And it was cold. I was in better shape that day. But, my son wasn’t. I put my oversized gloves on his freezing hands and tried to cheer him up.
He was miserable. And as we made our way along the narrow path he stumbled against the canyon trying to stay as far from the drop off as possible. He was cold, soaked through, and afraid of heights.
How about if I walk on this side and you hold my hand?
But, is there enough room for us to walk side by side?
Oh, sure. I’ve got plenty of room. Let’s go.
Some people think it’s wrong to lie to your children. Those people have never been stuck on the side of a mountain in a rainstorm with a scared 12 year old.
For parts of the hike, every other step was knocking rocks down the side of the mountain. Fortunately, in the dark and with the rain, he couldn’t see my feet. As for me, I just tried to focus on helping him. I had the same walking stick that day in the rain as I was using on last week’s hike. It kept me on the trail and kept both of us headed up the path.
I trudged on alone up the path. As my lungs started to burn again, I thought how long ago that other day had been. He had needed me back then. He couldn’t have made it without me. Now, I literally couldn’t keep up with him. He certainly no longer needed me.
Once again, I picked the bend in the trail as my goal. Fifty feet was a long ways as I went one agonizing step at a time, clinging to my walking stick like some magical wizard’s staff.
Five more steps. . .four more steps. . .almost there. . .three more steps and then I’ll take another break. . .why do I put myself through this every year? . . .two steps. . .I wonder how far ahead my boys are now?. . .one more step. . .SUCCESS. . .I staggered around the corner.
And I stopped.
Not because I was tired. Although, I certainly was. There standing in the shade provided by the shale cliff to the left stood my two sons. They weren’t stopped because they were tired. They seemed not the least bit annoyed at the wait.
For that’s what they were doing. My sons, whose hands I had held as they made this same hike years earlier, were waiting on me now.
You guys don’t have to wait for me, you know.
Yeah, we know. Ready to go, or do you want to take a minute?
That’s why we do this hike every year.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I took a hike today. It’s a hike I’ve taken often over the years. It’s one of the prettiest hikes in Utah.
Y’all going down Battle Creek?
Yeah.
Just realize it’s a lot different.
Still hikeable though?
Oh sure. Just a lot different.
Even with a fellow traveller’s warning I wasn’t ready. Oh, it started off scenic enough. A picturesque two wheeled track through the high mountain meadow. My boys suggested it looked like something out of Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam were leaving the Shire.
As we turned down the canyon, the beauty quickly gave way to something else. Battle Creek Canyon is located in Pleasant Grove, Utah, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City and leads up into the Wasatch range.
The West face of the Wasatch range is a pretty barren looking mountain range. There are few trees, mostly scrub oak. The hillsides are lots of dirt and rock. That is until you head up into the canyons. The canyon walls protect the plants from too much heat. It’s cool and often there are year-round or at least seasonal streams.
It’s actually quite pretty. But, this canyon no longer was.
Where there had been a wandering trail snaking its way down the mountain, now there was literally a road wide enough to drive a truck down. The city, or the county, or maybe the DNR has been doing construction work in the canyon. We get our drinking water and our irrigation water from those canyons. It looks like they’ve installed pipe and buried much of the stream.
Work needs to be done on our water systems. I get that. I’m in favor of it. Utah is a desert. Water is life in the desert.
But, in making it useful they also made it ugly. Who knows, maybe they’ll fix it. As we made our way down the canyon, we eventually encountered a construction crew. Obviously work continues.
Hopefully part of that work involves spending some time making it pretty in addition to useful.
Stay safe.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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This is tale of two. . .times. Okay, maybe cities, too. The first story takes place in Orem, Utah. The second in Logan, Utah or pretty much anywhere.
This is Rodney. You told Susan you wanted to speak to a man?
Yes. Thanks. I’m not sexist or anything. I’ve just found that men understand these things better, don’t you think?
. . .
Unfortunately for me and fortunately or him, my company didn’t allow me to say what I think. What do you do when “The customer is always right” runs into “The customer is a bigoted or racist jerk”?
Today, we have more options. But, my call happened in the dark ages of the 1980s. I was working for WordPerfect Corporation. I wasn’t actually a phone agent. I was an escalation agent for gateway products. And the customer had a question about our email client.
Susan, who had originally taken the call was one of our most experienced email agents. She was great at her job. Her manager, Maggie was also good at troubleshooting our email server.
You know who wasn’t good at troubleshooting our email server?
That’s, right. Me. I was focused on an entirely different product. But, because I could sing bass and not soprano, suddenly in the eyes of Joe Customer, I was going to be able to help him better than Susan, Maggie, or any of the other agents on her team. One of those agents happened to be my lovely wife. Anyone of those agents, all of whom happened to be women, would have been able to help Joe better than I did.
Instead of telling him what I thought, I simply gritted my teeth, put on the “customer smile” and continued our phone call.
How can I help you sir?
Technology is not an area that attracts a lot of women. It was not unusual during my time at Microsoft to sit in meetings where men outnumbered women by two or three to one.
When I ran RESMARK, a small software startup, we had a single female programmer and 10 male programmers. (And Mika was a fantastic coder.)
Women have made progress in business, but still are outnumbered at every level of management. My dear mother was a very successful business women. She founded and later sold both a million dollar CPA firm and a multi-million dollar investment firm. That was the woman who raised me.
My lovely wife was a better programmer than me in college and later a better technical trainer than I was. She often made more money than I did as well.
And Joe Customer wants me to agree with him that “women just don’t get it”? Not a chance.
My son is a customer support agent for an appliance company. He can work from anywhere if he has a good enough network connection and his laptop. And still, 30 years after Joe Customer embarrassed himself on the phone with me, my son said that he still calls in.
Not so much with my calls since I focus on vacuum cleaners, but the agents that take calls on things like dishwashers? Yeah, the women occasionally get someone who insists on talking to a man.
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. Those men do themselves and the women in their lives a disservice.
During my call all those years ago, I really wasn’t qualified to answer Joe’s questions. So, throughout the entire call, Susan sat right at my elbow prompting me what questions to ask and what answers to give.
If he had only known.
Stay safe.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I was having lunch at a downtown Salt Lake City restaurant. The man sitting across from me was a recent aquaintance I’d met at a “networking lunch.” He was a senior vice president in a local bank. He was on his lunch break. I was on a semi-permenant lunch break. I’d been out of work for several months.
What is it you want to do? What kind of a job are you looking for?
I work with computers and I most enjoy working on interesting problems or designs.
Maybe you should market yourself as a “I’m your computer guy that gets stuff done” expert?
Neither my friend nor I knew what to call my role. And not surprisingly, because I couldn’t describe it, I wasn’t very successful at finding a job to match my skills.
My problem was, when it came to my job, I didn’t know who I was. I knew what I did. But, I didn’t have a name for it.
A friend on facebook recently posted the question, “How do you describe yourself to others?” It got me thinking about how we describe ourselves. Are we what we do? Are we defined by our roles?
I worked for Microsoft for nearly a decade back in the late 1990s. My life was largely defined by my job. I had a single email address. I was [email protected].
It was very hard to leave Microsoft. And when I left I found I was empty. I didn’t really know who I was. I certainly wasn’t [email protected] anymore.
I described the experience as “marrying my company.” It’s a bad idea. I don’t recommend it for anyone.
Years later, I was working for a large non profit in Utah. I loved the job. I spent nearly five years there. One day they announced layoffs. My job along with most of my department were suddenly out of a job.
And yet, I didn’t struggle with my identify. I didn’t have that empty feeling. Of course, I was disappointed. But, I hadn’t let myself become overwhelmed by my job.
I didn’t respond to my friend on facebook. I didn’t make an attempt to explain how I describe myself to others. In my view it’s a complicated question. And since I’m not anyone else except me, I’m maybe not the best to describe myself to others.
What I do know is who I am. Just as I may lack the words to describe a smell or a sound or a memory, I’m not sure I want to make the attempt to describe what makes me me.
However, in business, it’s important to be able to describe the role you want. And what you can do.
Technical Program Manager
That was the title I was floundering for when I had lunch in Salt Lake City all those years ago.
I may be a Technical Program Manager, but it’s not what I am.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Today was an important day in America, Cinco de Mayo. Today in Mexico? It was just Tuesday. (Taco Tuesday, but nothing more significant than that.)
For most Americans north of the border: You’re doing it wrong. The celebration, the history, just about all of it.
First, let’s talk about what Cinco de Mayo (literally “fifth of May” in Spanish) is not. It is not Mexico’s independance day. That is 16 September. In 1810, a priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla issued a call to arms to overthrow the Spanish government. His speech was called Cry of Dolores, or Grito de Dolores. That was the start of the Mexican revolution.
Cinco de Mayo commemorates a battle that took place 5 May, 1862, more than 50 years later. (Mexico had already been “free” for decades at the time the battle of Cinco de Mayo occured.) You might think that the battle on Cinco de Mayo would be against the Spanish, the country that colonized Mexico. Nope. It was against the French. And the battle was actually the fault of the United States of America.
In 1862, the American Civil War was in full swing. The North imposed a blockade on the Southern states. This made sense. They didn’t want the South to be able to sell goods to other countries and they certainly didn’t want other countries able to get goods and arms to the Confederacy.
Interesting trivia point. The United States Government never officially recognized the Confederate States of America as a separate country. The official policy was always that the states were still part of the USA, but were in a state of rebellion. However, it is literally impossible to blockade yourself. So, when the Union imposed a blockade on the Souther states, it was a de facto recognition of the South as a separate country.
Then, as now, pretty much no one cared about the difference between a blockade of rebellious states and a de facto recognition of the CSA as a nation.
Okay, back to Cinco de Mayo. The blockade kept cotton from getting to France. After a couple of years, the French decided to take matters into their own hands. They decided to establish a base in the Americas that they could use to both support the Confederacy and they could use to get cotton out of the South.
To accomplish this task, they put together an army of 6000 French troops and landed them in Mexico. They neglected to ask the Mexican government for its opinion on the issue. In fact, they kind of put their own leader in place and forced the Mexican government to flee. The Mexicans naturally viewed an invading force of 6000 non-Mexicans as a cause of concern.
The Mexicans quickly assembled a loose collection of 2000 troops under the command of General Ignacio Zaragoza and rushed them to a little town called Puebla de Los Angeles (House of The Angels), a small town in east-central Mexico.
Six thousand French infantry supported by heavy artillary against 2000 Mexican irregulars. They met on 5 May, 1862. The battle lasted all day. The French assaulting the entrenched positions of the Mexicans.
When the dust cleared at the end of the day, General Zaragoza had lost less than 100 men. His soldiers had inflicted over five times that many casualties on the attacking French.
It would take another 5 years before the Mexican government was able to fully drive out the French. But, the battle of Puebla was an important victory for the Mexican army and the Mexican people. Much like the battle of Bunker Hill during the American revolution showed that the Americans were able to compete with the best the British had to offer, the battle of Puebla inspired similar pride and confidence in the Mexican nation.
Okay, so that’s the history. A big deal right? Not so much. The battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775. How many people do you know that celebrate it? My ancestors fought at Bunker Hill and I know I don’t celebrate.
In Mexico, 5 May is just another day. A typical Tuesday this year. It’s not a national holiday. There are no parades. Schools and banks don’t close. In fact, outside of the state of Puebla very little notice is taken of it.
Here in Utah, we celebrate July 24. It’s a state holiday commemorating the day in 1847 when the first Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. It’s a big deal in Utah, not so much elsewhere in the United States.
Cinco de Mayo is like that in Mexico.
So, enjoy Cinco de Mayo responsibly. If you drink, find someone else to drive. Don’t wear sombreros, they are just tacky and stereotypical. Enjoy Mexican food and take a day to celebrate our neighbors South of the border. And realize that had General Zaragoza’s ragtag bunch not been successful, it would have been much harder for the good guys to win the American Civil War.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2018 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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It’s not my quote. It was someone smarter than me. Smarter than you, too.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
– Albert Einstein
And Einstein probably wasn’t talking about meetings. But, he might have been.
How many reoccuring meetings do you have on your calendar? How long is each one? I’m going to out on a limb and guess that most of your meetings are an hour long. And the rest are either two hours or half an hour.
It’s a strange phenomenon. I think it’s a function of your calendar. Calendar or meeting appointments default to an hour. You can easily lengthen or shorten your meeting. In neat 15 minute increments.
Most meetings I get scheduled for by others are 60 minutes long. What is it about an hour that is a more natural fit for discussion than a different time?
Meetings aren’t bad per se. I know some business philosophies suggest having no meetings. Or at least no reoccuring meetings. The idea is that you talk to people when you have a need and otherwise you don’t.
In some ways it’s a very tempting idea. Too often meetings are like that expanding foam. The amount of discussion you have will expand to fill the amount of time you have. And I’ve been in plenty of meetings where I couldn’t figure out why we were there.
Having an agenda is a big help for not losing track of meetings. If you have an agenda, it makes it easy to understand when the meeting is over. Unfortunately, people sometimes like to talk. Even with an agenda there is no guarantee you’ll ever move past the first agenda item.
When I schedule meetings, I try to do both. I have an agenda, and I rarely schedule a meeting for longer than 30 minutes. It has an interesting effect.
I’ve found that my coworkers, especially those that are important to success of the project, but not compelled to attend, are more willing to commit to a 30 minute meeting.
But even a 30 minute meeting is sometimes too long. There is nothing more magical about a half an hour meeting than an hour meeting. It’s odd that we decide the day needs to be divided up into half hour blocks.
Don’t be afraid to break out of factor-of-30 meeting times, especially if it helps you keep your meetings as short as possible.
Albert Einstein would approve.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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At 17 years old he was the youngest employee at the fast food restaurant. He’d been working there for over a year. Many of his siblings had worked there as well. Two of them still did, although neither was working at the time of his feat. The day of his amazing prediction, he arrived right on time for the start of his 3:00pm shift.
Less than 3% of the population of Utah is black. There are many minorities in Utah however. It has a large latino population. There are a lot of Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Asians.
The hero of our story is black. His siblings are also black, and some are Asian and still more white. When he walked into the restaurant that day, he made a bold prediction.
I predict that at 3:15 a customer will come through the drive-thru.
Yeah, that’s not all that suprising.
And the car that comes through at 3:15 is going to order a 4 for $4.
So what? That’s one of our most popular items.
For the sandwhich, they are going to choose the junior bacon cheeseburger.
Sure. What sauce are they going to get for their nuggets?
Honey mustard.
Ha ha. Right. Anything else?
Yes. They are going to pay with a five dollar bill.
Oh, that’s risky!
. . .that will be dated 2013.
Needless to say, his coworkers didn’t give his wild guess much credence. Still they carefully watched the clock. The minutes ticketed by. At 3:12 a car pulled up to the drive-thru and ordered. Immediately behind it another car pulled up to the speaker and gave their order. They pulled away before the clock showed 3:15. But, there, right on time, was another car to order.
Can I take your order?
Yeah, give me a minute.
Order when you’re ready.
What are my options for the small combo meal thing?
Well, the Biggy 5 includes a sandwhich, fries, nuggets and a drink.
What about that cheaper one?
The 4 for $4? Same options on the sandwiches.
I think I’ll have that.
What sandwhich?
Let’s go with the junior bacon cheeseburger.
And what sauce for your nuggets?
What have you got?
Sweet&sour, BBQ, honey mustard, or ranch.
Honey mustard.
Please pull around to the 2nd window.
A hush fell over the restaurant crew. Or it would have if it wasn’t a fast food restaurant in the middle of the day. The car pulled around to the window. Behind the wheel of the late model SUV was a middle aged white man.
That will be $4.31.
He pulled out his wallet and reached for his credit card.
Too bad. Well, it was still an amazing prediction. As he pulled out a Visa, hiding behind it was a bill. Surprised, the man unfolded it to reveal a five dollar bill. Cheerfully he handed it through the window.
The coworker tucked the bill into the drawer and counted out the change. Handing it with the receipt and the food through the window she wished him a nice day. But she didn’t shut the drawer. Not yet.
As the driver pulled away, she pulled out the bill. There below and to the right of President Lincoln’s picture was the date the bill was printed.
SERIES 2013
His coworkers stared at him.
How did you do that? How did you know?
But, our hero just went back to his assigned task. A slight smile on his face.
After all, he still had five hours to work until his dad, a middle aged white guy in a late model SUV would be back to pick him up.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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At 12:59 AM I was standing on my front porch surrounded by my lovely wife and kids. My neighbor was standing with his family in the middle of the road staring off toward the west. Other neighbors occasionally drifted out into the street and glanced up at the partly cloudy skies off to the west.
We waited. And we waited some more. And we waved awkwardly while maintaining our social distancing. We were expecting them between 1:10 and 1:15. We weren’t expecting them to be late. I mean they were travelling 400 MPH. The 40-mile trip from Salt Lake City would be take about six minutes. They were late.
Like many people around the country, and certainly around Utah, we watched a group of four F35 Joint Strike Fighters, our from Hill Air Force Base north of Salt Lake City, doing flyovers to honor health care workers.
The flight has been planned for several days. It’s been advertised all over social media, and regular media for that matter. I have friends who are pretty anti-military. They are my friends but on this idea we disagree. I have great respect for the armed services. My daughter is about to report to her first active duty post. Well, as soon as the military lifts their travel restrictions.
She’s headed to Fort Collins, Colorado to join the Army veterinarian Corp. She’s a vet vet. (No one likes that joke except me.)
My brother retired from the Guard as a captain in artillery. My dad was in the Army. My uncles served. Like Simon and Garfunkle sang in “Baby Driver”, I never got the chance to server, I did not serve.
My friend saw the post on facebook about the flyovers and wondered “Couldn’t they spend the money on something else instead?”
No, they really couldn’t. Literally, they couldn’t. Our pilots train constantly. They fly our fighter jets when they train.
My kids went to school in Spanaway, Washington for a short time. It’s near McCord air base. Although technically I think it’s now McCord Fort Lewis Joint Base, or something equally unpronouncable.
One day we were driving with my kids on the freeway and a big C130 plane out of McCord flew over fairly low.
Hey, look. It’s the recess plane!
What do you mean, sweety?
When that plane flies over the school recess time is over.
The training flights took off at the same time every day. It just happened to also be the time that recess ended.
Today’s flight was different, of course. The planes took off in Northern Utah. They then flew south along I-15, crossing over Orem and Provo, Nephi and Fillmore. The southern end of the flight was St George. There they turned around and headed back north. This time they took a slightly more easterly route. They crossed over Manti and Ephraim, Heber and eventually Park City. (You’ve heard of that one. It’s where the Sundance Film Festival is held every year. . .well, not this one, of course. But every other year.) Finally, three hours after they took off, they landed back at Hill.
Could we have decided to spend the money on something else? Something more important than a symbolic display of military might?
No. The planes were going to fly anyway. The pilots were going to train anyway. All they did was change the flight path a little.
And that slight change in their path impacted a lot of people who are hurting.
My family is Army, but thanks Air Force. And thanks to the health care workers and the essential workers helping us get through this.
Stay safe.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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In 1983 Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire.
A few years earlier in 1977 Star Wars introduced us to Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Darth Vader. The rebels vs the Empire; the evil empire.
A couple of years before that, in 1975 in New Mexico, a small software company was founded by a college dropout named Bill Gates. The company, Microsoft would also become known as the evil empire. Mostly by the those who were crushed by the company that moved to Redmond and became the biggest software juggernaut in history.
If Microsoft was the evil empire, Bill Gates, was Darth Vader. I joined Microsoft in 1992. I left WordPerfect Corporation in Orem Utah and moved to Washington. A few years later, WordPerfect died. The owners did manage to find someone to buy them out, but the company was finished. They were bought by another Utah company, Novell. And not many years after that Microsoft crushed Novell as well.
Microsoft is not well liked in Utah. Sentiments are improved today, but over the years, many IT and software engineers lost their jobs to the evil empire.
Bill Gates was considered an evil person by many in Utah and elsewhere. Microsoft was viewed as a bully, and Gates the chief bully. Steve Jobs who only met Gates once described Microsoft products as “Just not very good.”
Bill Gates, is not an evil man from what I can see. I’ve never met him personally. But, he simply ruthlessly ran the world’s largest software company in a time when ruthlessness was how all software companies were run.
He, of course became insanely wealthy. Wealth without equal in the world. What do you do with all that money? Do you buy the world’s most expensive art? Do you indulge in man’s worst failings, wine, women and song?
Gates instead decided to start a foundation. He put a lot of his money into it. He split his time between Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Eventually, he turned Microsoft over to others to run and devoted himself fulltime to working with the foundation.
What did the foundation focus on? A computer on every desk? Upgrading the world’s software architecture? No.
Much of the world’s population doesn’t need a computer. They need clean drinking water and immunizations for their children.
The Gates foundation set the auspicious goal of eradicating preventable diseases around the world. Much of their work takes place in Africa.
Not only did Bill Gates dump $50billion of his own money into the foundation, he went around to other billionaires and pressured them to donate their wealth as well. Warren Buffet has donated billions to the foundation.
As you might imagine, no longer being head of the evil empire and instead working to save dying children around the world changed many people’s opinion of Bill Gates.
There are places that he is one of the most respected, even beloved person in the world. He regularly meets with kings and presidents. He is a legitimate expert on infectious diseases and vaccines. He’s respected and admired around the globe.
You’ve probably seen him in the news lately in discussions around the current pandemic. Gates, like all of us, is anxious for a vaccine and feels it’s important to maintain social distancing and lock down orders. Unlike you and me, Gates has the power to do something about it. He’s focused the entire efforts of his foundation on finding a vaccine.
And a curious thing has happened. As the quarantine has dragged on, we have more and more people who think that perhaps the whole thing was a mistake. Perhaps the virus isn’t as deadly as we thought. Perhaps shutting down the economy was a trick. Perhaps this is all an effort to take away our rights. Perhaps vaccines are a sham as well.
Perhaps Bill Gates is just using this crisis to sell a bunch of vaccines for a disease that isn’t dangerous so he can get more money. . .to . . .replace. . . the. . . billions. . . he . . .donated to fight the virus and ones like it.
And so once again, Bill Gates finds himself villified and even hated by many people. But, if he can help the campaign against the virus be half as successful as Microsoft was, I don’t think he’ll mind being one of the most hated men in the world. . .
Again.
Stay safe.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Did you know that John Wayne wore a toupe? He is the epitome of the Hollywood hero from the 1950’s and 1960’s. He was very vain about his appearance and only a couple of pictures exist of him without a full head of hair. Maybe that’s why he acted in so many westerns. Benefits of cowboy hats.
Interestingly, although he went by the nickname, “The Duke,” not only wasn’t that his real name, John Wayne wasn’t even his real name. His real name was Marion Morrison. Not exactly a hero’s name. Not that there’s anything wrong with the name Marion. But, it doesn’t scream “alpha male,” the persona that Marion, er John, er The Duke presented to the public.
I have a confession to make, I enjoy red carpet events. You know, when the movie stars get all dolled up and get their pictures taken? It’s not real, of course. Most of the dresses are on loan from designer houses. The jewelry the woman wear is borrowed.
But, it’s a show. I find award shows themselves boring and a waste of time. (Except for Ricky Gervais’ opening monologue. That’s gold.) The show before the show is much more interesting. It reminds me of the image that Hollywood projected back in the 1950s and 1960s. Stars managed their public images. Or, actually, studios managed stars’ public images. We didn’t see the ugly side of Hollywood.
The press was difference back then. Today it’s common knowlege that President Roosevelt was confined to a wheelchair due to polio. But, in his election campaigns in the 1930s and 1940s the press kept it a secret.
Mickey Mantle was one of the greatest baseball players in history. He played outfield for the New York Yankees. He had a career .298 batting average. He played his rookie season with the legendary “Iron Horse” of baseball, Joe DiMaggio. He was part of one of the greatest rivalries in baseball in 1961 when he and team mate Roger Maris chased Babe Ruth’s seemingly impossible 60 homeruns in a single season. Mantle fell short at 54 while Maris went on to hit 61 and break the Great Bambino’s record.
Mantle was a fan favorite. And while he was one of the greatest, he probably fell far below his potential. Jim Bouton, in his seminal book on baseball, “Ball Four” tells a story about Mantle, with whom he was teammates.
“We have been out the night before, having a few drinks, and Mickey came to the clubhouse the next day, and he was a little hung over. So, you know, Ralph Houk said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Sleep it off in the trainer’s room. We’ll put somebody else in center field.’ Anyway, the game goes extra innings. We need a pinch-hitter in the 10th. Somebody went to wake up the Mick. He comes out, put a bat in his hands. He walks up to home plate, takes one practice swing and hits the first pitch into the left field bleachers, a tremendous blast.
“Guys are going nuts. He comes over, crosses home plate. Actually, he missed home plate. We have to send him back for that. He comes over to the dugout, and he looks up in the stands, and he says, those people don’t know how tough that really was. Then after the game, the sportswriter said, ‘Mick, how did you that?’ … And he said, ‘Well, it was very simple. I hit the middle ball.’ ”
What do these stories the movie star, the president and the baseball player have in common? They are all about heroes who weren’t what they seemed.
Bruce Willis, for much of his career worried about his receding hairline. Until finally, he accepted the inevitable and simply shaved his head. Patrick Stewart, the once and future Star Fleet captain, Jean Luc Picard made a bald head one of his most attractive solutions.
The late Senator John McCain ran for president. His war wounds prevented him from raising his arms above his shoulders. Senator Bob Dole ran for president against Bill Clinton in 1996. He right hand was injured in WWII. Today, Representative Ben Crenshaw represents Texas’ 2nd Congressional district. He’s most distinguishing feature is a patch he wears over his right eye. He lost his eye in combat in Afghanistan.
Having a physical impairment is no longer considered something that needs to be hidden away from the press.
And athletes with a drinking problem? That’s not even news.
No more secrets in the press today. Not for politicians, not for celebrities and not for athletes.
We have gained visibility, but we have lost the hero worship that we had in previous years. Or maybe hindsight only makes it look like it was hero worship. I’m not one to dwell in the past. There were plenty of things to be disappointed in that happened in the 1950s and 1960s. Racism and segregation were two of the worst.
And that leads me to the second half of the title I used at the beginning of the post.
Never get too close to your heroes. . .
…for heroes are by their nature, more or less than human.
Stay safe.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. 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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved