Best Practices

The new paradigm. I have written about this before, the new catch phrases that define the new crop of people in charge. Proactive, Adminisphere, etc.

The new term appears to be "Evidence Based Best Practices". Which is another way of saying, 'we only do things that have been proven to succeed. That way, when they don't, we can't be held responsible.

Living in Fear

I received an e-mail recently from a friend that had a graphic video attached. The video shows a man standing on a beach that is attacked and eaten by killer whales (Orcas) and is dragged out to sea.

It is pretty graphic.....when taken out of context. The end of the video has some wording along the bottom of the screen in Spanish. Translating the text informs the viewer that this is in fact a South American Television commercial that sells school supplies. Really, I am not kidding. The link to it on Snopes.com is here:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/killerwhale.asp

The wording in the e-mail that accompanied the video, which had been cut and pasted repeatedly along with the commercial, stated the following:

"The Orcas mistook this guy for a seal, but still, one minute you're
here, the next you're not. This guy was just walking into the water,
not even ankle deep, and two killer whales just snatched him. No
blood. No guts, No mess, just gone!! Very graphic! He happened to be
waving at a friend taking a film of him, and it was his last wave!
Suppose his friend hadn't been filming, or even looking in that
direction..... He was just gone in less than a heartbeat. Too scary.
He disappeared."

I have seen countless e-mails like this over the years that contain 'shock' value, or list half truths about political parties or candidates, or fuel the underlying anxiety in certain people.....and this has me worried.

There are only two things that can come out of this sort of e-mail. Some will dismiss it as bunk, while others will take it as fact and live in fear of ever going near water again. So what is the point of distributing it? There isn't any profit involved here (unless you speak Spanish and realize that it is a commercial, which most don't), and there isn't a message about beach safety, it is just fear spreading itself like a cancer through unknowing hosts.

Michael Moore touched on this subject in his excellent documentary "Bowling for Columbine", in which he canvassed two cities, one in Michigan and one in Canada, separated by a bridge. The Michigan city had over 100 murders in a year, the Canadian city had 2. The Americans all owned guns and locked their doors at night; the Canadians owned no guns and never locked their doors. The American lived in fear, the Canadians all thought we were nuts. All that physically separated them was a bridge, but what really separated them was a state of mind.

As I have aged, I have realized this. The greatest killer of our spirit, our drive and our love for life, is the fear that we spread amongst ourselves. There are unscrupulous individuals out there that feed on people with uncontrolled fear. They sell us alarm system, extra health care polices and plan out our vacations so that nothing 'bad' will happen to us. I can't help but wonder that somewhere out there in cyberspace, these people are pushing videos and emails such as these to drive the hordes of fearful and afraid people into locking their doors and buying sugar pills that will keep them from getting sick.

It all comes back to one of the reasons I created this blog....look at the title: "Hypocrisy - Question Everything"

Failure is Normal, Don't be alarmed.

We ended an experiment this past weekend. We disconnected television, internet access and our phone about 8 months ago, cutting the cord with Cox Cable and throwing all our eggs in with Verizon wireless and using one of their 4G wireless hotspots to provide connectivity to our home.

That didn't work too well. The connectivity of the hotspot was horrible, and forget 4G speed, we were lucky to get 56K baud rate out of the thing. So we bit the bullet and I ordered up Cox High Speed internet only (no TV or Phone) on line and waited for the install. I received an e-mail two days later stating that my service was on, but there was nothing about when my Broadband modem would show up. I waited two more days and then called them up. After being transferred 3 times and being put on hold for 10 minutes, I was finally told, they have forgotten to ship the modem to me. They offered to overnight it, or I could go pick one up at a local Cox outlet.

I chose to pick it up that day, and went down to pick it up on Saturday. When we got to the store, they stated they didn't have the modem I ordered so they could not give me one. But they could reverse the charges and sell me a different one, which I opted for.

We got the modem home and I hooked it up (which I have done countless times before) and there was no connectivity. Being suspicious, I went outside to check the cable box on the side of the house. Sure enough, while the service was 'on', they had neglected to actually 'connect the coax cable to the house, which I had to do as well. After a delay of 4 days, and about 4 hours of my time (which I won't get reimbursed for), we now have Boardband back in the house. My wife thinks I am a God for being able to make her iPad superfast now.

THEN..........

We went to purchase a new bed at Sleep America on Sunday. We moved up from a Queen to a King and got a memory foam matress....owwww, so firm.....so big, heavenly. Only problem is, they delivered it the next day, and it was the wrong one. Instead of a king, it is a California King, instead of being firm, it is extra firm (like a rock). So now we have to call them up and have them come out and exchange it, after we went through the whole process of setting it up in our bedroom and found out that it didn't fit the frame.

Which brings us to Monday......what do you think is going to happen today?

Starring Vic Morrow.....

Every once in a while I browse through NetFlix and find some old television shows from my youth. I slip them into my que to see if there is still any of that old childhood magic left by re-watching these shows. I have watched 'Fireball XL5' and 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' and was somewhat disappointed. They really didn't regenerate that gee-whiz effect that they had in my youth. Recently, the DVD version of the 60s television show 'Combat!' (starring Vic Morrow and Rick Jason) was dropped in our mailbox and I popped it into the BlueRay player not expecting too much.

I was surprised. This was a really good show. Much better than I remember. As a child in my teens, I only remembered Vic Morrow and the fact that he was super cool and had a Thompson sub-machine gun. As an adult, the dialogue, story lines, lighting, camera work, soundtrack and direction all work very well. These are things I would not have noticed as a child. As adults, we are used to the slick Hollywood glamorization of war. The likes of 'Saving Private Ryan', or 'Red Tails', where everything is based on action and fast pacing. "Combat!" shows a different type of war, the human side of a world in chaos. Sort of like an early version of 'Band of Brothers'. This show might be the NetFlix exception, I actually might add Disc-2 to my que.

Super Sheet

I finished a project at my office last week. It is a statistical spreadsheet that breaks down some of the data that my program collects. This spreadsheet is actually an Excel Workbook that consists of over 30 individual spreadsheets and 150 graphs of the data. The workbook can be loaded with 24 different data pulls, and automatically organizes the data and graphs it. It took me about 40 hours to put this all together. It is so overwhelming that I doubt it will actually be used by my office, but I am glad I made the effort, because if you take the time to read the numbers and graphs, it points the way to the future, whether we like it or not.

Locker Room

Let me give you women a peek into a place you never go. The men's locker room at the YMCA. I go to the 'Y' to relax. I work out, take long showers and sit in the steam room with my thoughts. This is the place where I am alone with all the memories and collected wisdom of my life. It is a place where I think and ponder, where I ask myself questions. However, I often seem alone in this endeavor. Because much to my surprise, my fellow men don't share this mindset. Most of the other male members of the 'Y' are downtown professionals, such as lawyers, judges, managers and the like. Yet, their conversations in the locker room are anything but deep or thought provoking. Most of what I hear is sports talk about recent games, stories about court cases (In my last case I had a juror that was soo fat....) or puns about fellow members abilities or sexual prowess. In essence, it is the high school locker room populated by 55 year old men. As I search for the meaning of life in the swirling clouds of the steam room, I realize just how out of place I am when another member asks his racquetball buddy, "Did you fart?"

Politically Incorrect?

During the course of my employment I get to deal with individuals that have large families that are enrolled in state sponsored services. I have been trained in cultural diversity as a result of having to deal with these individuals. What might be considered a normal family environment for a Caucasian family of 2.5 children is going to be totally different than an Hispanic family of 8.2 children. I get that. What I don't get is the naming conventions that some minorities have regarding their brood. What does it tell you when the names of the children in a family are as follows; Tonisha, Taniqua, Tonosha, Tiquain, Toeneal, Tanque, Timaul? It tells me that the parents (usually the mother) think this is cute, and that they are completing a set or collection of children. The children probably don't really care, because they are individuals, but anyone having to deal with this family as a group is just going to roll their eyes and think to themselves, "Not again.". Then there are the families that name all their children after automobiles...I am just saying, there should be a law against giving out bizarre names to children.