Last Updated : Sunday, 3 March, 2002 at 10:32 PM -0600
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| Daynotes On a Budget Last Updated : Sunday, 3 March, 2002 at 10:32 PM -0600 |
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Monday, February 25, 2002
In the spring of 1966, the United States was in an uproar. The growing hippie counter-culture backlash to the restrictive fifties-style lifestyle and all it stood for was in adamant opposition to much of what defined American values in the post-war period. Our involvement in Viet Nam was becoming a national nightmare, with spots beginning to appear on the evening news about this "police action".
In the middle of all of that, on a warm May evening, two Iowa kids went to their spring prom. He'd graduated the previous year, and had enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was home on leave prior to shipping out for a duty station overseas - Southeast Asia. She was just fifteen, and secretly engaged to this man who had fallen in love with her, and she him.
As lovers facing a separation birthed by war customarily do, they shared the traditional "Soldier's farewell." He left for Southeast Asia, in Viet Nam, and she wrote regularly. Until she found that she was no longer regular in certain other areas of her life. Bluntly, she was pregnant.
She sought her mother's help, and, as was often done in small-town America in those days, the young girl was bundled off to a nearby town and placed in that temporary home for unwed mothers most small towns seemed to have nearby. Her mother moved with her, despite the fact that her father was dying from lung cancer. She wore her engagement ring until it grew too tight. Her mother made her remove that ring, and send it back to her fiancé.
Her mother never posted the letters she wrote. Any letter with the return address from him went into the trash. The letter her mother made her write told him that she no longer loved him. No word on her condition or the struggle she was going through, living away from her family, pregnant, and about to give birth to a baby.
When the baby was born, the woman's hands were tied to the bed to prevent her from even touching the baby girl they'd made. The Marine was half a world away and didn't know he had a daughter. He only knew jungle, mud, and death.
The Marine threw the ring into the Indian Ocean, and signed for a second combat tour.
She stayed tied to the bed, struggling to see the infant, as only moments after birth, the little baby girl was whisked away. That little baby girl was adopted by a couple. She was from a small Iowa town, where her father had done all sorts of jobs, including sheriff. He had been born in Chicago, and spent summers, and other time, in another small Iowa town, where he was known as a "fresh air kid" - one of those children from large (he had 11 brothers and sisters) poor families who came to rural Iowa from large cities during the depths of the Great Depression for clean air, sunshine, and some time with a childless couple who wanted a child.
He'd left for Army duty in Korea, and experienced much of the worst of the war. A bazooka gunner, he was given what might have been one of the most terrifying job there was - take a long metal tube, and point it at the big old tank, bristling with machine guns, weapon ports, and that big forward gun, and try to blow the tank up with a rocket fired from that tube. No armor protected him other than a pot on his head.
He returned home to his girlfriend after his tour of duty, got married, and settled down to make a life for themselves in that small Iowa town - her home town, where her father had been mayor and sheriff.
This new couple, the Army Private and his wife, made a house and life for themselves in Iowa, but something was missing. They tried, and finally, they signed up and eventually adopted a baby girl - the same one that the Marine Private never knew, that the mother hadn't been able to hold. They loved her, raised her, gave her all of the opportunities she could have asked for and more besides.
In due time that little baby found she was adopted. She grew up knowing that she had been wanted by the people who were her parents, but out there, somewhere, were two people who loved her enough to give her up in the hopes that she would have a better life. Which she had. She never, ever forgot them, but she didn't want to seek them out to find the missing part of herself - she had everything she needed with her mom and dad.
The Marine served two tours in Viet Nam, and when he volunteered for a third, the Marine Corps shipped him home, going the "long way" via Europe. He returned to his home town, learned what had happened to his girlfriend/fiancé, and ended up marrying her, as he says, "anyway". They raised three wonderful boys to be young men, two of whom serve today in the United States Air Force. One is an officer with a bright future before him, a father to three wonderful children, step-father to a fourth. The second is an air traffic controller with an even brighter future, and two "saves" to his credit, and he's married to his high-school sweetheart. The third son is a wonderful father to a little girl, and a good husband to his high-school sweetheart.
It runs in the family, I guess.
Last week, when I went off on Governor Goofy, I received a number of criticisms of my diatribe against the man. Let me clear up a few things.
First of all, it's true. I've never served in the armed forces. I considered service, but decided against it. I wish I'd gone. If I count it out, I've got four relatives and eight people I consider close friends who have significant military experience. My scoutmaster who helped me achieve my Eagle Scout rank was a former Marine. I've the highest of respect for those who put their lives on the line so that I could open my mouth like I do here.
Second - I'm aware that even in times of war, there are soldiers in the combat theater who have never seen combat. However, I find it offensive in the extreme that a man like Ventura would say things like "you've never hunted until you've hunted man" and pretend to have combat experience, until he admitted last year that he never fired his weapon off the practice range. It's demeaning and disgusting to those who've been "hunted" to hear men like Ventura make those statements. I know. They've told me.
Third, I realize that most of you aren't Minnesotans, and therefore haven't seen what Mr. Media Darling Ventura does while here in the state, away from the Tonight Show and David Letterman. Jesse's a simple individual - life for him is all about "Us" versus "Them". And that's fine, until the "Them" becomes the "Us" that elected him. His rhetoric rings well in the rafters, but when he abdicates responsibility so he can go his own way and ignore the elected representatives of the people of this state, there's a breach of responsibility and duty and honor there.
And yes, I realize it's perhaps brutal to criticize those with thin skins - Lord knows Ventura's got that in spades... Our buddy Jesse has decided to make sure that the local media is always at least one of the "thems" out there for him to pick on, so he's always going to have at least one enemy around to kick.
But as Heinlein said, "a little lizard told me he was part dinosaur on his mother's side." Jesse apparently needs to hang on to what he's got in terms of "pride" and the rest.
But to those of you who insinuated that I wasn't aware of how military life worked, in my immediate family, my father-in-law was in the Army. I've got two close friends - one served two years in the army, and now nearly 20 in the Army Reserve. Another put two years in the Marines - his wife, two years in the Navy. Her father was a career Submariner. They're my daughter's godparents.
Oh, and that little story above about the Marine and his girlfriend, the Army Private and his wife? I married their daughter, my lovely wife, who suffers her thirty-fifth birthday this week; Al and Donna are still married, and now they're together all the time as they tag-team drive a big rig on the road - they're truckers. Two of Ann's brothers are in the Air Force, and we couldn't be prouder of them.
We also haven't, and never will turn our backs on Ann's mother, who raised her, got up with her when she had nightmares, suffered through Ann's sarcastic wit (like I do now), and all the rest. Nor her father; every time we're in Iowa we make the trip to the cemetery to see his stone, and the stone of her grandfather the Sheriff and his wife, whom I knew as Grandma Sophie.
So those of you who think I know nothing about the military and was just spouting my mouth off and owe Ventura an apology can keep waiting. I pay the man's salary out of my hard work - I enable him to knock off early so he can hide from the legislature, at least for now. When the election rolls around this fall, I'm going to do my best to make sure we aren't paying that goofball any more than we have to to get him out of office. He's embarrassed me enough.
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
I hate spam...
From: some_dickhead@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 1:14 PM
To: stt34@public2.com
Subject: hello
Do you know what the number one factor of a succesful business is?
ADVERTISING! ADVERTISING! ADVERTISING!
Gee, I always thought it was "treat the customers well."
As in don't piss them off by spamming them...
You can have the greatest product or service in the world, but without proper
and effective advertising, you are doomed to fail!
As you are failing now, no doubt.
INTRODUCTING the 21st Century Marketing Solution for all businesses small
or large alike.
Yup. Piss off the customers, have them go elsewhere...
We have been in the Marketing business for five years. We have helped
thousands of businesses succeed with out innovative "DIRECT MARKETING
SOLUTION"
Five years, eh? Gee, I would think that SMART marketers would learn
after five years that this shit doesn't work.
What is "DIRECT MARKETING SOLUTION"?
It's a pain in the arse, it is...
*Direct email advertising directly into the email box of 1 million people.
And if only one's a pathological lunatic, you could die from
Spam.
*Your ad in our "Fax classified section" to 5000 business fax recipients.
Oh, that's good... piss off 5000 people with faxes, too...
*Our seasoned ad designers will help form your ad into a winner.
Winner? Seasoned Ad Designers? Seasoned with what? Salt?
What does all of this mean? Email us at some_dickhead@yahoo.com for more info.
No, really, I changed the e-mail address...
DO NOT HIT REPLY, WE WILL NOT SEE YOUR EMAIL.
You won't see it anyway...
NOTE: THE WORDS "MORE INFO" MUST BE IN THE SUBJECT FIELD, NOT THE BODY OF
EMAIL.
How about the words "Steaming Jackass?"
To be removed from this list please email us at some_harvester@yahoo.com
and you will be removed immediately.
Could I have you removed immediately from my planet? Thanks!
Other than that, we're just working through things...
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
Life today was just too busy to allow me to think about stuff like this. Sorry. Tomorrow isn't going to be much better. But I'll see what I can do...
And yes, for the record, my life is becoming a cardboard hell...
Thursday, February 28, 2002
Moving hell, day 39.
Well, not really, but it feels like it.
It was rather humorous to listen to a conference call this afternoon, and listen to all of the decisions being "undecided" and "redecided" during the course of it. The funny part, I guess, was that the people who were in charge of planning and organizing the move were less prepared than those of us who were moving. Isn't that special. Not at all surprising, of course.
And in the process of packing up and shifting around, I've found literally hundreds of things I could use, need, or otherwise just plain want - three weeks before we move, of course, where we haven't got the room to store them. Lovely. So there goes a five-drawer file cabinet, two desks, a couple of folding tables, some office chairs ... We could go on for a while. Of course, the old dead computers are going home. Yes, up to eighteen, which isn't a patch on Mr. Wallbridge's collection (mine are all PC, of course - nothing fun like Power PC or anything like that), but it's more than I ever thought my wife would let me sneak into the house.
The really good news is that some of them are 486s with small hard drives. Why is that a good thing? Firewalls, mostly. I'm not opposed to plunking down a couple of bucks for network cards to turn them into real working firewalls.
Anyway, other than that, it's been a fun day. I've done more physical work today than I think I've done in a couple of months. It sure is nice to move and stretch and see progress, rather than look at a pile o'code.
Of course, I should enjoy the window while I still have it. I won't, come Tuesday. Alas. Oh well. I've lived most of my office life without a window in my face, another couple of years won't kill me... I think. ;-)
Anyway, tonight was Rhiannon's concert. When we talk about people who have jobs that regularly require bravery, why is it that grade school music/band instructors are left out? I mean, seriously. Anyone who would attempt to have fourth and fifth graders play Wipeout is beyond brave. Insane, perhaps, but I just don't know.
Though there is a small slice of hell for me there. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to music. At least, tempo and staying on the beat. And when it comes to drums, let's face it - all you have is one note, it's just a beat, man... Oh well.
Time for bed... G'nite.
Friday, March 1, 2002
Well, today was the first day of the rest of my life. If that's the case, I'm going to really have to learn to like cardboard...
I'd like to touch on three topics tonight, but I don't know how far I'll get, so here goes...
1) Customer Service...
A Friend of mine had DSL locally, and decided he wanted to start stashing up the cash for a downpayment on a house far, far away from the urban annoyances he was experiencing. He cancelled his cell phone, his DSL, his cable, and cut back on other expenses. He contacted his ISP, Twin Cities Internet, who promised him that the account was cancelled.
Ten days later he called to confirm, and stepped into the biggest god-damned mess you ever saw. Apparently he needed a confirmation number, which he hadn't been given. Since I'd been standing near him when he made the call to cancel the service, it was painfully obvious he was getting jerked around.
Flash forward three months. He's put a stop on the payment withdrawals they'd been making from his account, and they referred the matter to a collection agency. He has responded in writing to every one of their written demands, and he's now at a point where they're ready to take him to court.
So he's going to sue them for non-performance of their service they've allegedly provided, for lost work time, and for pain and suffering. Odds are they'll drop the whole issue when they learn they didn't follow their policies in the first place...
2) Church-sanctioned abuse
JHR yesterday posted an interesting take on the whole "Boston Massacre" issue where the Catholic Priest-turned-pedophile was allowed to prey on kids for 30 years...
I respect JHR, and I see no point to disagree on in his entire piece. What I do see is a complete abdication of responsibility by the individuals in Boston for twenty-plus years, as they knew this evil man was doing this damage, and yet they did little.
The Catholic church has moved towards a doctrine which they call "Love the sinner, hate the sin." I'm sorry. There's a line, and it's not so fine, between "sin" and "evil".
A "Sin" is an act which was carried out, and which the individual regrets - the act caused harm to someone else, or to the individual themselves, and was, to the measure of the Church's moral code (not all of which I agree with, mind you), is wrong.
"Evil" on the other hand, is an act which is repeated ad naseum (literally, in some cases), and is harmful, typically to other, innocent victims. The individual doing the action is in no way regretful of those acts.
Sorry, folks, but that defrocked priest is evil - as are those who aided by silence in his crimes. I find very little love in my heart for those who would allow someone in a position of trust to harm children. They are, most certainly, evil.
3) Personal Safety
As in, my own.
I'm taking my life in my hands tonight, and most likely tossing it into the wind. Sunday marks my wife's 35th birthday. So we've got a slam-bang weekend planned...
FRIDAY
A) Load leftover computers into the car
B) Pick up kids, wife
C) Take wife to dinner with family at always popular (with the rest of them) Red Lobster (kills two birds with one stone - it's lent, thus no meat on Friday, thus I get to avoid peanut butter and grilled cheese tonight)
D) Stop at the mall to order my new glasses
E) Stop at the grocery store to pick up some basics,
F) Go home, where the wife finds four semi-functional PCs in her trunk,
G) Do laundry
SATURDAY
A) Up early and over to the Cookie Mom's house
B) Pick up 18 or so cases of cookies
C) Come home and split out five orders of cookies
D) Head to St. Cloud (my folks, my wife's in-laws, where she can collect "ammo" for her "game".
E) Deliver cookies
F) Head into St. Cloud
G) Go to a store for which I used to work nearly 20 years ago now, to put on layaway a futon for future visitors,
H) Go over to a friend's house for dinner
I) come home
SUNDAY (her birthday)
A) Up early
B) Church
C) Trip to my office to pick up a chair and white board that's unwanted,
D) Home to pack
E) Dinner of ... ?
I submit to you that I've planted, in that schedule, the seeds of my total and utter destruction.
Saturday, March 2, 2002
Just a few thoughts that occurred to me...
Today, while riding "shotgun" to St. Cloud, I realized that as a nation, the United States of America isn't exactly what it used to be. And that's not a good thing.
Consider this - the interstate road system was designed and built after World War II at least in part to aid in the rapid transportation of military material from one place to another. That's why when you're on "I-anything" most of the time you'll see roads going across above you. Not below - that's because the interstate is designed primarily to be able to haul things like tanks over it.
Now, part of this was in response to WWII and in some ways also to the Korean War.
But consider another portion of our recent history - space flight, and a man on the moon. While it was an extraordinary scientific triumph, there's absolutely no arguing with the fact that at least, in part, the space "race" was competition between us and the old Soviet Union.
Flash-forward to September 11, 2001. We've been challenged again in our history, as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and our founding fathers were challenged. We were challenged in a similar fashion to Abraham Lincoln, facing terrorists attempting to steal military property from the rightfully elected government of these United States. We're facing a challenge that Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood up under as he heard of the bombs falling on Pearl Harbor.
What's irritating is that our response, after slapping around a couple of grown-up schoolyard bullies with guns, and scaring them into the hills like frightened little rabbits, is to turn to the economy and wonder if we'll be able to get a DVD player for a decent price.
I talk a lot with John Vogt - John's in manufacturing. And we've often discussed the problem of the loss of skills. Certainly, we have talented designers and engineers. But to create truly useful products, one cannot slap out a design and then move on - one needs to refine the design. One needs to talk to the production people, and find out that this neat-looking edge is very sharp and has cost roughly five hours of down-time this week in injuries, or that the material for that portion of the device is just not holding up.
A good design is often the result of knowledge, skill, and ability. And no small amount of luck. A Great design, on the other hand, is a result of a lot of knowledge, skill, ability, experience, and little to no luck - if you know what's going on in the production environment, you'll be able to design around the problems which crop up.
The problem with "off-shore" construction is that most people will poo-poo problems occurring elsewhere as being the result of cultural differences or some other easily-explained excuse. And that's just not the case. Regardless of the prevalence of e-commerce, e-communication, or e-crap you've been able to introduce to an organization, we're losing the "meat memory" necessary to doing tasks.
And, while we've been able to avoid it so far, sooner or later we're going to end up on opposite sides with a country which supplies our critical component for some military thingamajig or whatsis. Then what do we do?
I've long believed that as a race or group, we've got two choices - and this goes for America, as well - either we improve the breed by consolidation, or we die out completely. Humans are an intensely competitive bunch - we like to compete and compare. The only way we're going to come together around a common goal is if the need for that goal comes from outside our planet.
It's either that, or we'll end up killing ourselves first. I just hope I'm not around to see it.
Sunday,
March 3, 2002
Happy Birthday, ANN!
Phew. Remember, back on Friday, when I said it was going to be busy? Boy, was I off. Short. As in we were busier than I expected.
Today, I got up before 8 am (which is not quite 6 hours after I went to bed), and then I headed into my office to finish up some packing and all the rest. Since I'm the fellow in charge of the move, of course, my area is the very last to get packed. I've packed a whole heck of a lot of stuff, but not my own. Figures.
Meanwhile, Ann got up and did EIGHT loads of laundry (which we figure is probably the last "big major load of laundry" batch we'll have to do. We figure we'll have to do a load of some clothes next week, or maybe the week after, but then again, we're only 20 days away from our own washer and dryer - and actually, we're really only eighteen days away from owning the house. Gee, that's terrifying...
They also sorted and packed just about two hundred boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. That's an awful lot of work...
Anyway, I came home, we finished up two or three more loads, and then things started to go south... We had three loads in the washer, and some woman (we saw her come in and add a few things while we were standing there) had pulled out our wet laundry to replace it with her own - by my watch (and mind you, I've been dealing with this laundry room for nearly ten years now - I KNOW the timing on these things), we were about four minutes late. This woman obviously had issues...
Of course, the good news was that a few minutes into her laundry, a water main in the building broke. I found out when Rhiannon came running in - "Daddy, Jack's trying to wash his hands but no water's coming out."
So, on the one hand, I was quite happy that the wench who had tossed out our laundry would have to pay to re-wash her clothes and deal with the delay that a busted water main and a couple of hours of water off. On the other, I'm kinda stuck with not being able to flush the toilet, etc.
However, in the middle of that, we took Rhiannon over to a friend's house to hang out and work on her First Communion Banner, which she needs for her first communion in about two months.
So, we dropped off Rhiannon, with the intention of making two quick stops, then we'd head home for a bit of packing, before getting her back home. So we trotted off to Half Price Books to see what we might be able to find for Ann's birthday.
No joy there, so we headed to our typical movie rental place, where we couldn't find anything there, either. So we ended up heading to Embers for a root beer float for Jack, and some time to think about what she'd like.
While there, we realized it was time to go get Rhiannon, so we headed over there, to find her art project was nearly done, just lacking a dowel, which was on it's way back from the store momentarily. 20 minutes later, the dowel showed up, and 15 after that, we were ready to go.
Of course, it's never that easy. Some good friends were in town and wanted to go out for a birthday dinner. Which we then did, cheaply, and headed to Target to see what, if anything, Ann would like for her Birthday. And we finally, finally, returned home.
Phew. Gee. I think we missed the packing portion of the weekend entirely. Guess what I'm doing this week...
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