A day in the life....

Tom Brady (TOM BRAY-D)

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen (jih-ZEHL' BUN'-chen) have welcomed a baby boy.

God, it's great being an American. No need to explain how to say Tom Brady. Do you think somewhere in the world there's an article that reads:

MIDDLEOV, Novhere. – New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (TOM BRAY-D) and supermodel Gisele Bundchen have welcomed a baby boy.

Violate my Computer dad!

What parent doesn't want to wake up at 6AM on a holiday to the pleas of an online addicted child who wants yet another game validated?! I know I do! I sent him downstairs to make himself something to eat with the promise that I would be right down. I lied. He finally convinced me that he wouldn't stop until I got up and did my job (football has taught him the concept of "jobs" and "roles" but he only sees the value when it applies to us, his parents....).

Fine. Rot your mind. Just don't come crawling to me when your liquefied brains ooz out your ears.

Using SocialText in the enterprise

Putting Web 2.0 to Work

View more presentations from ross.

Managing a "Line of sight" manager

Why dogs bite people

If someone dressed you up like this, wouldn't you bite them? what is the thinking here? Isn't it bad enough that the poor puppy is small enough to be crushed with one misstep? That his fur is less than perfect? I feel bad for him. I wouldn't dress up like that myself (might have in college; no clear recollection).
On the other hand, if this little guy has soiled the cut loop berber one too many times...bring on the borg-dog costume!

Incoming call

I was in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my flight home when "incoming call" appeared on my blackberry. A call from one of the twins. My kids mostly text, so when they actually use the phone function on their phones (?!) I am always filled with anticipation and dread, but mostly dread.

"Dad?" "Where's the snake stick?". For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a broom handle with an aircraft cable attached that has a loop in it. The cable runs through a hole in the end so that the cable can be pulled tight and make a noose around a snake. Good tool for our area, as we have Diamondbacks. We have one stick in the backyard, and another one by the garage door.

"Why?" I asked. "There's a snake in the house" was his answer. "Where's mom?" (Really important to get a clear picture of her state of mind. Might not have to get on the plane, if you know what I mean). She was out, and the snake was in, so I gave him the following instructions:

1. Get the stick.
2. Get the snake.
3. Get rid of the snake.
4. Put away the stick.
5. DON'T TELL MOM!

It turns out it was just a normal snake, and it was escorted out, but the critical part of the story is that mom doesn't find out. I don't want to move again.

Sex and Drugs and Rock & Roll!

I saw a rough sketch of this @ http://thisisindexed.com/ and thought it would be a great visio exercise. It speaks to me as I drop the kids off at parties. Really reduces the guilt about lurking down the road in a darkened car watching to see if any kids show up with a keg like object.

Mobility AND Collaboration!

This is the "Seven Man Conference Bike". It rocks!

In the future, these devices will be commonplace as corporations discover that there truly is a convergence of Mobility, Collaboration, Sustainability, and Employee Wellness. This cutting edge tool was featured on last night's Tonight Show. Once again, Conan stays on the bleeding edge!

Not to mention putting an end to those team building exercises where you fall backwards into your teammate's open arms. What says "I trust you" more than sitting backwards while riding through traffic while trucks zoom past you .

You know you want one.

Motivation!

And yet we continue to support an outdated model.

"I'll take the 1 TB drive... and that shotgun"

Gotta love Fry's Electronics. Where else in the world can you get a combo like this? Not even Costco has these two items; I checked. I know, sad, but hey.... Speaking of love, who doesn't love the advances in storage? A Terabyte! For less than 90 bucks. I remember not too long ago you had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get that kind of storage. And that was for NAS. Not all sitting by my feet. Warms the heart. I am feeling too good about it all to go into a rant about how much storage there really is on the " 1 TB" drive (the discrepancy is more than my five year old laptop had in total). At these prices I don't really care. Besides, if I get really torqued, there's always the shotgun. Just have to pry it from my son's hands.

Fun fact: Dogs learn the meaning of sounds quickly. Be it the sound of the dog food bag being opened, or the toilet seat being lifted, or whatever else interests them. Add the sound of an Airsoft shotgun being racked. They now know that it's time for them to hide out under the bed. Not that he shoots them. but the whizzing and the plinking of the pellets makes them nervous. But not me; I am wearing eye protection. And I have a machine gun. Take that!

What happened to the Chewy Nougat Center?

According to PopSci's Aug issue, page 27, the center of the Milky Way has the molecules responsible for the flavor of raspberries. I was under the impression we were a nougat galaxy (with nuts of course), but we may well be a jelly.

This changes everything.

I wonder how the world's religions will react to this startling news... Does God, in fact, like the fruit filled ones better, and we should be looking down on the chews and hard candy galaxies? I don't know what to think.

Insulted by my son's GPS

While traveling Atlanta, I had occasion to use my Blackberry's GPS. I used it until the battery died because I am a man and I do not ask for directions, or navigation assistance- even from my wife. When mine died (phone, not wife) I used my son's phone. Putting aside that I didn't have GPS when I was a kid, and had to ride my bike to school (two miles each way, uphill, both ways, and was happy to do it) let alone have GPS (Apollo 11 didn't have GPS for cryin' out loud, and they went to the moon) I started using his. What was I going to do? Stop and ask for directions?!

GPS was apparently programmed by friends of my wife, because it started in in a remarkably similar fashion with progressively more and more irritating comments escalating as follows:

"you are now off course"
"you are continuing off course"
"you have not corrected your course"
"replotting new course based on your new position"
"you are significantly farther from your destination than when you started"
"you did not properly execute the recommended course change"
"are you incapable of following directions"
"is there something wrong with you"

and finally (as if SHE can take directions).... "please put your wife on the phone"

Fine. Let the wife deal with the phone. I'm getting out of the car. Pardon me; Minivan. How degrading.

Just bad taste (or is it good taste but bad....)

I think this speaks for itself. Hmm. Come to think of it, I'm kinda hungry. Cya.

Too dumb for the elevator

Were you ever part of something, and right then in the moment think "this is just not happening?" I have to admit, it happens to me more than it should, but the one yesterday was exceptional, even for a family that has these moments often.

We all know how elevators work. It's not rocket science. Bear that in mind when you read this.

The elevator doors open. No one comes out, so we can all pile in. there are five of us, and we all have a suitcase or something in our hands (or pulling along, etc). We all advance in unison directly toward the opening. We all crash into each other, shoulder to shoulder, forming a semi circle around the door. We all relax and take a half step back, followed by another attempt to step into the elevator. In unison. Again. We all squish ourselves into the exact same semi circle. We all relax and take a half step back. Then, as if we were one mind (probably totaling one between the five of us....) we all step forward again. Experience tells us that we will not make it again, so everyone lunges at the same time. A collective ooof! rises from the group as we compress into our little semi circle. We are all frozen for a second, and then the elevator doors slowly slide closed, as if to say "I don't have time for this~ you are all too stupid to ride. Take the stairs."

Dissed by an elevator.

We all slowly relax and then start laughing. To the untrained eye, we are a bunch of imbeciles; but to the trained Psychologist, we are a case study. Probably a best selling book.

When the elevator doors opened again, I lunged as quick as I could.

Just like everyone else in the family.

History repeats itself.

How to recognize good ideas

The key to taking action on good ideas is to learn to identify the bad ones, and then, once you identify one, take no action. Even better, shout down the purveyor of the bad idea. This is my new strategy that will help me make it through the summer. I don’t want to live forever; I just want to survive the summer. At least the part of it that revolves around my kids. My kids and their bad ideas. That’s the goal.
So here is a short list of clues that an idea is a bad one. It is by no means a comprehensive list. The kids have a tiger team hard at work on developing new and innovative presentation technologies in order to disguise their bad ideas as good ones. Sort of like a cloaking device.

Pay attention; here’s the list:

The conversation starts with “Dad! I have an idea!” There are variations: “I have a good idea!”, I have a great idea!” I have this awesome idea!” Lies. All lies. Change the conversation, turn up the TV, steer the car into oncoming traffic…anything to distract the advocate and derail his idea. NOTE: The daughter usually knows deep inside that her idea is bad, so she usually doesn’t use one of these key phrases. Usually her ideas are discovered after the fact, and she will use the phrase “I thought it was a {Good, Great, Awesome} idea…how was I supposed to know?!”

The idea seems like a good one, but it involves any of the following: ANY of the following:
• Fire
• Power tools
• Guns
• Car
• Ramps

Me being shot (or thrown, or suspended, or “Keeping my eyes closed” for some indeterminate period of time)

The smearing of sticky substances on me, followed by the introduction of any of the following words: Ants, rodent (or ”rodents”), weasel, ferret, badger, or alligator. Especially Alligator). Dinosaur is safe for now, but if any of them show too much of an interest in genetic engineering or recombinative biology then BANG! it goes on the list.

Any of the above mentioned animals and the phrase “poking with a spoon” Original, yes, but not good.

On second thought ANY of the above in any combination, or as a stand alone component of a larger plan.

My money.

Anything that could possibly draw the attention of, or include the untimely arrival of any branch or combination of branches of uniformed authorities (local, federal, or military- including foreign entities). Or their plain clothed counterparts.

The concept of flight. No matter how short the duration the idea calls for, the actual duration will be shorter. Trust me.

The process of “grabbing it as I go by”. This, in my experience, just requires way WAY too much coordination and timing for the current staff here to master, even in simple “good” ideas.

The roof. Any idea that starts on the roof, or moves up to the roof, always ends badly. See “concept of flight” above.

Fire. I know, I already mentioned it. But it is SOOOOOO popular, and SOOOOOOO poorly managed, that it needs to be mentioned again.

The dog, when combined with any activity involving the harnessing of her energy, enthusiasm, strength, or ferocity. In short, anything with a harness. And the dog CANNOT be present when anything involving a target is going on. She senses this on her own, but it should be reinforced. She’s been through enough.

The plea “let’s not mention this to mom”. You think?! I figured that out on my own, Einstein, but saying it out loud makes me an accomplice, and that isn’t good. I can't believe they would even bring that up! It goes without saying! Imagine that conversation...
"Honey, guess what I let the boys do today?! See, Joe had this great idea where they would ride toward each other on their motorcycles, like jousting knights, but instead of spears (which, as you might imagine, didn't work out too good), they would shoot their Airsoft machine guns at each other! I know, I know-Rad! But wait, there's more! They would both be taking jumps off ramps! Cool huh! But guess what?! It gets BETTER! They were on FIRE! YEA! I know, Awesome, huh!"
Sure, the kid may injure himself (or the dog), but he is, after all, just a kid. He will be forgiven (eventually). I, however, will not. EVER. And even worse, my wife would follow me around all day. Everywhere.

So there you go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You have 74 days to survive.

Gorgeous!

And the lake's pretty too. This weekend was the first time in 17 years that we have been able to ski together without any kids in tow. The twins were off boarding together, the youngest was in board school, and we were free. FREE! We did the back side of Northstar, and we had a blast while doing it. I almost forgot what it was like. I skied the first day and boarded the second.

I am on 800mg of Ibuprofen, and that is enabling me to walk around today. I hope the pain subsides soon. The warning label on the bottle says I can't keep taking these high doses for extended periods of time.

We put a man on the moon; why can't we take the pain out of snowboarding?

"Joey took my eye and stuck it to the ceiling!"

A lot of strange things have been yelled in our house, but this wins. I was reasonably confident it wasn't literally true, but given the amount of screaming coming from the youngest's bedroom I figured I would run as fast as I could....just in case. It turns out that the eye in question was one of those sticky gooey things, and it was indeed stuck to the ceiling. Joe was indeed the stealer/sticker. My first response was "don't stick other people's eyes onto the ceiling!" I quickly amended it to "Don't steal your brother's eye!" I still don't think either statement really addresses the whole issue. but I have other issues that must be dealt with right now.

First and foremost, I have to get the thing down. It creeps me out. And the little guy gets a big kick out of yelling "I see you!" when I go into his room and he isn't in there.

Now that's a sleepover!

You don't really appreciate how spacious an aircraft carrier is until you do a Scout overnight on a submarine. Our Pack usually goes to the USS Hornet for an annual live aboard program, but just to mix it up this year we stayed on the USS Pampanito in SF bay. I always suspected that I wouldn't be a good submariner, but now I know. But not for the reason you might think. I didn't even think about drowning or any of that other petty fear stuff. Nope. I just wanted to get some fresh air. It must have sucked serving on a sub. We had modern conveniences, like deodorant and starbucks, and it still sucked.

I did learn a few things:

• Never, EVER sleep near the head. Imagine moving an outhouse into your family room. Then imagine everyone living ONLY in the family room. Nuf said.

• My son SNORES. I mean he REALLY SNORES. Like some sort of dying animal. Disturbing.

• Aircraft carriers are SPACIOUS. REALLY SPACIOUS.

• A LOT of people can sleep in a really small space. We had all of us in this one room. Thanks to this trip, I now know I can sleep 35 people in my kitchen. That knowledge alone makes the pending depression less scary.

I can hardly wait to get back to the aircraft carrier.

Stick it in your ear....

At some point, far in the future, I will look back on this and laugh. I will be old, senile, and in some sort of care facility (or living in a van, down by the river..) The above tools were used to flush out detritus from my son's ear...

He was all smiles and laughter. I think he knew the total number of things he had stuffed into his ear, but he wouldn't say....The grand total was 12. Three little plastic fruit things from the centerpiece on the dining room table, several large pieces of pencil lead (with pencil attached in some cases) and the rest was pencil lead from a mechanical pencil. 12.

I am not sure what the thought process was...

"Hmm. This would fit well in my ear.
This too.
Oops. I better use a pencil to get them out.
That didn't work, and I'm running out of room in there....
I better use a mechanical pencil.
There! All full!"

The doctors and nurses love to see us coming. We are like a comedy team. Always entertaining, and always in ways no one expects. Who needs those contrived reality TV shows. I live in one.

Where the heck are the cameras?

"Behave in Church, and you can have your gun back"

I don't sit around listing off things I would never say; I just don't have that kind of time (plus, it does sort of scream "something's wrong here..."). But when I say something that would be on that list I usually recognize it right away. The quote above is an example. We don't live in a dangerous place, it is the 21st century, and my kids don't have real guns (you can thank me later). Even so, it is something I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever say, let alone follow through on. But hey, carrot and stick.

Carrot and stick.
Church and gun.

You be the judge.