Category Archives: philosophy

by | July 2, 2014 · 9:47 pm

“Mistaken for granite”

Our hearing can play tricks on us. There are web sites and books devoted to misheard song lyrics, and Norm Crosby has a long and successful comedy career as the “Master of the Malaprop”. Sometimes a foreign-born person’s accent causes an unintentional new phrase. I was waiting in an auto repair place and thought I heard an upset gentleman with a thick Eastern European accent say he was “tired of mistaken for granite”.

While “mistaken for granite” was an amusing take on “taken for granted”, it also had a deeper meaning. I have five very close friends who have been there for me since Lucy passed away. Like Lucy, these five people are loyal, supportive, generous, and hard-working. Those qualities also subject them to added stress at work because of toxic co-workers who are selfish and uncooperative, who have figured out that while there is no “I” in “TEAM”, there is a “ME”, and therefore everyone else is “MEAT”. That toxicity seems prevalent in workplaces, from small companies with a double-digit headcount to Fortune 500 companies with five- and six-figure head counts.

It is quite easy for someone taken for granted to be mistaken for granite. Granite is strong and can withstand tremendous pressure. It is durable and withstands weather extremes for centuries. But even as strong and durable as granite is, it can fracture under intense and prolonged pressure. Fissures allow water seepage that weakens the granite from the inside out. Repairing a granite monument or facade is very difficult and expensive.

The people who are routinely taken for granted are the ones who are the first to offer help, to listen, to support, and to comfort. They rarely ask for any recognition in return and put others first. That level of generosity comes at a price. It takes a lot of strength and sacrifice being there for people in need. Like a hewn block of granite, these people have incredible inner strength but that strength can erode or crack under pressure.

Many people are lucky enough to have one person like that in her or his life; I am blessed to have five. All five know I am ready to help no matter the size of the task, to listen, to support, and to comfort when required. Lucy taught me much about compassion and it reflects by the quality of my close friends. She knew four of my close friends and they loved her. I know my fifth friend would have loved her, too.

Please take a minute to thank the “mistaken for granite” person or persons in your life. More than likely, the response is something humble, but you will brighten that person’s day. The rock solid stability provided is priceless. Be extra nice to the “taken for granted” people. Those people have feelings and problems like any other person but are not apt to freely disclose what pressure he or she experiences on a daily basis. Altruistic people are a rarity and our society can ill afford to lose any more of them. As always, give your special someone a meaningful hug because you are blessed to have that person in your life.

 

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by | February 23, 2014 · 7:10 pm

Another end of the world deadline has passed

The Mayan calendar “ending” in December 2012 passed by quietly. So did the “Y2K” debacle, which was much ado about nothing. OK, there was the “IT professional” fool about 45 miles east of the Twin Cities who spent tens of thousands of dollars building and stocking a doomsday bunker. The economy did need some stimulation, and a fool and his money were soon parted.

This time around, it was supposedly Ragnarök, a Norse apocalyptic fable which tells how nearly all the major gods, including Odin, perish in a fierce battle along with the destruction of Earth and the nine realms. This was to have happened yesterday, February 22. The date seems to have conveniently coincided with a Nordic festival. One of the harbingers of Ragnarök is the three-year winter called “Fimbulvetr”. OK, this winter has seemed three years long and as of this writing it is showing few signs of relenting, but it’s not “end of the world” magnitude yet.

Fascination with end of days predictions are prevalent throughout recorded history. Perhaps times of uncertainty and unrest see a marked increase in doomsday prophecies. The Cold War nuclear arsenals stocked on either side could supposedly eradicate all unprotected humans on Earth dozens to hundreds of times over. Religious prophecies have a common theme of a great battle destroying Earth and humanity followed by a gradual rebirth and perpetual peace (or ascension into eternal peace without the rebirth). It would be nice to achieve some form of Utopia without losing billions of lives and destroying Earth along the way.

Trying to influence the unknown is a risky venture. Missing a variable may actually make the situation worse. Many religious teachings and philosophical writings indicate we will never fully know the future nor will we know the exact date and time of the “end of days”. Physicists believe the universe as we know it will exist for another 101,000 years even though humanity is not around to test the theory, and thus we will never know with any degree of certainty. Perhaps we should focus on trying to influence the present.

Start influencing the present by giving your loved ones a meaningful hug. If you are fortunate to have a special someone, let that person know you love her or him. Love has a way of settling the unsettled. Here’s hoping winter retreats quickly and Fimbulvetr averts for another year…or millennium.

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by | November 27, 2013 · 6:04 pm

“We are experiencing technical difficulties…”

Those of us “of a certain age” or older (born before Apollo 17, the final NASA manned moon landing) remember when a television network feed was interrupted by weather, solar flares, mechanical issues, or occasional human error. A “Please Stand By” graphic appeared on the TV screen and an announcer would intone in a deep, serious, ceremonial voice “We are experiencing technical difficulties…please stand by”. The announcement repeated every few minutes until the station either regained the feed or switched over to alternate programming. They acknowledged the problem, worked on a resolution, and used the announcement to let us know they had not forgotten about us.

Technology improvements through the decades have nearly rendered technical difficulties obsolete, at least for “Over The Air” (OTA) broadcasting. The same is not true for cable TV transmissions or streaming video. Once signal drop happens, there is no warning, no acknowledgement of a problem or a resolution; it just stops working. Compounding the matter is many cable subscribers have Internet, television, and telephone bundled together. When it works, it works well, but when it fails, it fails completely.

Business class Internet provider service level agreements (SLA) usually stipulate 99.9% availability. I was an IT manager for almost ten years and signed several of these agreements. Simple arithmetic shows that the 0.1% allowed downtime per day is 86.4 seconds (60 seconds per minute × 60 seconds per hour × 24 hours per day = 86,400 seconds; 0.1% = 0.001, so 0.001 × 86,400 = 86.4). During a standard contractual year of 365¼ days, the allowed downtime is 8 hours, 45 minutes, 57.6 seconds (86,400 seconds per day × 365.25 days per year = 31,557,600 seconds; 0.001 downtime is = 31,557.6 seconds; 31,557.6 ÷ 3600 seconds per hour = 8.766 hours).

Consumer class Internet service does NOT have SLAs. I have Comcast for my cable, Internet, and telephone services, and there is no uptime guarantee. If I need an uptime guarantee, I could upgrade to their Business Class services for considerably more money per month. I could not find consumer SLAs for Dish Network, Charter, Century Link, Frontier, or Knology, though it is possible SLAs exist. The providers assume “it just works” and that people can call in and navigate several minutes of automated phone before being queued to a human in a call center 10,000 miles away. After all, everyone has a smart phone and a smart phone provides voice service in the “unlikely” event something is amiss. This is not a rant against Comcast, for until last Friday they provided reliable service, and the replacement cable telephony modem appears to have solved my issues. However, I was surprised at the dearth of consumer SLAs for these services even though a consumer is locked into a contract for a prescribed time frame.

Service level agreements are based on trust. The service provider trusts the service they are providing meets or exceeds the SLA parameters. They trust outages rarely occur, but are quickly resolved, oftentimes with no noticeable interruption to the customer. The customer trusts the service provider to honor the SLA. Because of this trust, the business customer is allowing the service provider to handle a critical piece of the business’s communications infrastructure. It is puzzling why Comcast et al. do not seemingly trust their consumer services enough to back them with an SLA. Perhaps they know something that we do not know.

Trust is very important to us. We trust our family to nurture us and love us unconditionally, and I am fortunate that mine does. We trust health care providers to care for us when we are vulnerable because of illness or injury. We trust public safety to protect us when we are in peril. We trust a particular product brand because of reputation. We trust a service provider to provide the best possible service. Trust is difficult to earn and easy to destroy.

Finally, we trust our friends. Trust in our family may have its origins in preservation of the species, but we choose our friends, and we hope we choose them wisely. We trust our friends with critical pieces of our internal infrastructure: our hopes and dreams, our worries and fears, our strengths and weaknesses, our secrets. We trust our friends to cheer us up when we are feeling down, to celebrate our victories, to help us see things from a different perspective, to listen when we need to talk, and to be good company when we are lonely. There is no formal signed contract needed because our friends provide these services willingly. Any unresolved violation of our perceived terms of service result in the friendship terminating. This is why ending a friendship is almost as devastating as a loved one’s death. Our friends become part of us.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow in the United States. My post from last Thanksgiving is still timely. We should take time and be thankful for the people we chose as our friends, and for those people who trust us to be their friends. That trust helps us get through our life journeys.

Give your loved ones a meaningful hug, try to stay away from retailers open on Thanksgiving Day, stay warm, don’t eat too much, and celebrate your thankfulness for being together! If you have a friend or loved one who cannot be with family tomorrow, try to give that person a call or better yet, try to include that person in your celebration. Those people make your life better by being part of it, and that is definitely something to celebrate. You can trust me on that.

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by | November 20, 2013 · 9:33 pm

Oh, deer.

The month before Thanksgiving in the United States is usually the beginning of harvest season. Large tracts of former prairie land now filled with corn, soybeans, oats, or wheat also make ideal feeding grounds for deer. Deer hunting season and large, heavy harvesting equipment rumbling through tall corn leaving no cover, combine to pressure deer to move somewhere safer. Most of the crop harvesting along Interstate 90 in southern Minnesota is complete. It is not the most scientific surveying method, but the number of deer carcasses along the roadway shows the deer population is rebounding nicely. The live deer are harder to see because they are much farther from the freeway now, but they are out there, though I think many hunters may disagree.

Despite the size of their eyeballs, deer have terrible eyesight and their eyes are better suited for low light environments. Bright lights such as headlights temporarily blind a deer causing it to momentarily freeze while it tries to figure out how to see again. A vehicle moving at 70 mph covers 103 feet per second, and the average passenger car weighs ten times as much as an average deer meaning a collision results in major damage to the vehicle and serious or fatal injuries to the deer. Like deer, people freeze up when facing very bright lights, but we can use our arms or hands to shield our eyes. “Deer in the headlights” is a phrase used to describe someone freezing up in a critical situation.

We all have “deer in the headlights” moments: public speaking gaffes, first dates, forgetting one’s lines when acting in a play, the first day on a new job, a traumatic experience. Our moments usually end with maybe some embarrassment, or some ego bruising and loss of dignity, or laughs, or life lessons, but we are usually able to walk away intact, unlike the deer along the freeway. We have loved ones and friends to help us get through those moments, help with damage control, and help with getting us back on track. If not for those people, “deer in the headlight” moments are permanently damaging. Having those people in our lives gives us one more thing to be thankful for this holiday season.

Give your loved ones a meaningful hug and think of the times they helped during a “deer in the headlights” moment. Stay warm, and don’t stare directly into bright lights.

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by | November 13, 2013 · 9:36 pm

The holidays are encroaching

Yes, the holidays are approaching. They are also encroaching, especially Christmas because of the shorter buying season this year. Home Depot already had a Christmas display by October 20th. You really are seeing Christmas promotions coming earlier every year. It is encroaching even more into autumn (in this hemisphere).

Thanksgiving in the United States is the fourth Thursday of November. Many companies also close the day after Thanksgiving, so people can enjoy a four-day weekend. Retailers realized that people enjoying a day off might have reason to go shopping with proper incentives. Wikipedia has a detailed definition and explanation of “Black Friday” for those of you living outside the United States or want more detail.

The latest date for the fourth Thursday, the 28th, occurs when the 1st is on a Friday, like November 1, 2013. The earliest date for the fourth Thursday, the 22nd, occurs when the 1st falls upon a Thursday, like November 1, 2012. Those extra six days of shopping season are very welcomed by retailers. Fast food and casual food restaurants also see a noticeable increase in sales during that period.

Stores opening on Thanksgiving Day is a recent development. There are businesses that traditionally have been open on Thanksgiving: gas stations, convenience stores, pharmacies, and restaurants. But retail stores like Target, Best Buy, Gap, and Wal-Mart would close. Unfortunately, the shortened shopping season is resulting in more retail chains opening on Thanksgiving Day itself, with some opening as early as 6:00 p.m. They believe if they are open, people will come.  My hope is that their Thanksgiving Day sales volume will not justify opening on Thanksgiving Day next year.

I had the misfortune of working for two small companies that did not close the day after Thanksgiving. I was lucky because Lucy and I would have a quiet Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, then we traveled an hour to my brother’s house on Friday evening to be with my family, but it was still a nuisance not getting that Friday off. Some of my co-workers had family out-of-state or out-of-country. Traveling to Asia is much easier with four days off rather than a weekend. This year it directly affects a close friend who will be unable to travel back to Illinois to be with family. I know it will also affect a niece and a sister-in-law.

As long as people are willing to stand in lines waiting for a chance at acquiring a loss leader item in extremely limited supply, the retailers will keep pushing “Black Friday” open times earlier into Thanksgiving Day. People should choose to be with family on Thanksgiving rather than wade through a sea of crazed shoppers only to go home empty-handed.

While the big-box retailers are participating in their “social experiment”, a different social experiment started in 2010. Small businesses are at a disadvantage to the big-box stores.The idea behind “Small Business Saturday” was to level the playing field a bit. It is ironic that American Express championed the idea. American Express usually has the highest per transaction “swipe” fee and charges the highest merchant fee of the major credit card brands. This years’ Small Business Saturday is the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 30th. Even if you are not an American Express card member, please take the time to shop at a small business. Check out the Shop Small map to find participating businesses. I hope to visit Carver Country Flowers, Gifts & Formal Wear and say hi to Annette.

I have my outdoor Christmas lights installed. It doesn’t take very long, and I try to do it the first weekend in November. Putting lights up in 50 degree weather is better than putting up lights in 20 degree weather and standing in snow. Lucy would insist the lights stay off until the day after Thanksgiving. That is when I will plug in the outdoor light timer. The Christmas tree gets installed the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving. Perhaps I’ll try making piirakkas and red velvet cakes again this year. Julie and Suzy survived my last batch of baking with no ill effects, and they’re still talking to me.

Give your special someone an extra hug tonight. I know some of you have a loved one away from home, so surprise him or her with a phone call, text message, or email. Stay warm and thank you for your time!

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