Can you blog about having nothing to blog about?

I haven't had any pressing issues on my mind this week, and that leaves me with nothing to blog about.  So this post is a whole lot of little items with no big themes, and in no particular order.

• My best friend from college is visiting nearby, on the way to her 35th college reunion.  I am looking forward to meeting her in Baltimore.  Fortunately, although she flew through London, her travels were not interrupted by volcanic ash.
• I have been looking at eBook readers, but not come to any final conclusion, except that I like the idea of the Nook more than the Kindle since I can borrow ePub books from the library for free.
• I started quilting again.  I am so far behind with baby quilts that some of the children will be leaving for college before they get a quilt, but I keep trying.  Goal is to use only stash.  The first one on the list is a quilt for a little boy, but there are several others that are standing in line.  I probably should make a waiting list.  They all have to be done before the August/September time frame when I will need to focus on a quilt for grandbaby #2.
• Work frustrations continue with the realization that I have been basically relegated to individual contributor status without any project management responsibility.  It is so far from the intent when I was hired that I don't even know how I got into this position.
• For the first time since I started watching I am completely uninterested - ambivilent about the outcome of the American Idol  finale.  I like country music, witness a trip to Vegas in October to see Garth and a trip to Boston in August to see Kenny, but Lauren Alaina and Scotty Mcreary don't "light up my life."  Now James Durbin?  He's a performer.
• My vet is insisting that I give my cat an oral suspension of Fomatidine twice a day.  She has reached the point where if I open the refrigerator door she runs for cover.
• I have absolutely no idea what happened at the end of the House finale last night.  Does anyone care to explain?
• My next door neighbor asked me to send an email for her about a part for her kitchen faucet.  I am trying to figure out she has survived to this point, however she has acquired a computer, and her house should be wired tomorrow, so I expect that she will be joining the digital world soon

So these are the items on my mind.  I suspect that the last one is a possible future post.  Something to think about, anyway.

Ethics at the crossroads of the real and the virtual

I know, that's a very long title for a blog post -- it started out even longer. The more I look at it the more pretentious I feel.  Seriously, who am I to write about ethics.  I posted on Facebook and received interesting responses.  I determined that I needed to explore the conundrum I was facing in a longer form -- and fair warning, the post is long as well.

Background
I play a virtual game created by a real company (Zynga) with real employees.  This Zynga game allows you to dig for treasure, perform quests, decorate your island, and interact with "friends" in a virtual world.  It isn't Second Life, but like any business model, Zynga needs to make dollars to pay their employees (my research showed it to be somewhere around 1300) and one of the ways they make money is to sell virtual cash that can be used to enhance or speed up the game experience.  In a blog post on How Zynga Makes Money the author showed that micro transactions, pennies a day, added up to big business over the millions of users playing Zynga games.  Virtual Cash is big business.

Setup
The game I play sometimes has bugs.  I do find the Zynga game slightly more buggy than some of the others that I play, but generally I ignore the bugs and keep on playing.  However, to counteract negative reputation, Zynga has 24 hours customer support through chat, and when I hit a snag, I use that support.  That's what I did when I experienced a play stopping bug on Monday night.  I was working on a quest and completed half of it when the window identifying the required steps disappeared.  I waited about an hour, and when it didn't come back I went to support.  I have found all the customer support agents to be very pleasant.  They are probably very heavily scripted, but that doesn't mean they respond inappropriately or robotically.  I explained the situation and after investigation, I was told that a bug in the quest had caused it to complete.  I pointed out that if it had completed where were my rewards, and the agent told me he would add them to my account if I waited.  So I waited, and sure enough, after a refresh, there were my experience points and my food.  There was also supposed to be approximately 7400 in gold coins, but since I have over 9 million gold coins 7000 more or less is not really noticeable to me.

Conundrum
I went back to playing the game, and it wasn't until about 30 minutes later that I noticed that instead of being credited with 7400 gold, I had been credited with 7400 virtual cash.  This is a LOT of cash.  In "real money" terms, if you didn't buy on sale (and virtual cash is almost always on sale) it would cost about $1000 dollars to buy 7000 virtual cash!  The most I have ever had at one point is about 100 and that took forever to earn.  The question is, what do you do under the circumstances?  Do you say YAY and immediately start spending?  How do we look at a totally virtual commodity in an ethical way?  (More about the ethical questions in a little bit.)

Personal decision
My immediate reaction was that this cash did not belong to me.  I went to my email where I had received a report on my chat session and (as directed) replied to the agent explaining the situation and then I waited.  Unfortunately I didn't get an email reply immediately, or even during the next day.  The situation continued to bother me throughout the next day, and that night I went back to chat support and explained the situation to a new agent.  She removed the additional island cash, thanked me for being so honest, and left me with about 7% of the previous total as compensation.  I felt much better.  500 virtual cash is still more than I have ever had, but it isn't the crazy number I had before.

Ethics in a  virtual world
This is where the questions of ethics and morality come in.  I received interesting comments, serious and facetious, in response to my Facebook post.  Would keeping the money have harmed anyone?  Would keeping the money have been illegal?  Was this considered a virtual transaction? Was the decision to return the cash ethically (and morally) necessary?  Do immoral, unethical, or illegal acts performed in a virtual world not "count?"  What do our reactions to the question tell us about ourselves?

I am not a philosopher, and I suspect a philosophical person might have a different take on the questions - or might ask different questions.  The ones that hit me most are first whether illegality or immorality "counts" in a virtual world, and second whether this transaction at the crossroads counts as a virtual transaction or a real one?  In answer to the first, I think the answer is "it depends."  If you are playing World of Warcraft and you aren't willing to kill, you won't be a very good player.  Many computer games, especially first person role playing games, rely on murder and mayhem for the primary storyline.  Other games, as discussed in the blog on how Zynga gets rich, rely on cooperation, responsibility, and reciprocity.  While you do get to blow up the occasional item, it isn't on a neighbor's island, and you can only make positive choices with respect to neighbors and friends.  Clearly, where there is computer code there are hackers and hacks, but in most of the gaming situations I have experienced, hacks are frowned on, ignored, rejected, and frequently reported.  A hack can get you permanently banned from a game. 

So here we had an honest mistake.  If the agent had given me extra gold coins, experience points, or food for my backpack, I would probably have done nothing.  These are truly virtual commodities.  They cannot be converted to real dollars, nor can they be directly purchased with real dollars.  You cannot convert gold coins to virtual cash.  However, virtual cash is different.  While you can occasionally dig or win one or two virtual dollars, it can take a long time to amass enough to buy some of the treasures for sale.  I always made my decisions about how to spend virtual cash carefully.  So even though you can buy virtual cash for real dollars, is it the same? 

• If you went to a supermarket and the cashier gave you too much change, would you give it back? 
• If you went to the supermarket and the cashier didn't charge you for an item, or undercharged for an item would you point that out? 
• If you ordered one item online and received three, what would you do?
• If the item you ordered online was a game, or a piece of a game, and you received extra, what would you do?

The first three questions have easy answers for me.  In the first, I would give it back.  We all know those kind of mix ups come directly from the cashiers pocket at the end of the day.  In the second I would point it out.  We would expect the store to make it good if the error shorted us.  Why shouldn't we make it good if the error shorted them? (If your lucky the store will give you some sort of break for your honesty, if not, think karma.)  In the third, I would immediately contact the online company and figure out how to get their merchandise back to them - not on my dime, it wasn't my mistake - but presumably if they want it back they will take that hit.  Again, who knows, they may tell you to keep the product :-).  So what do you do with the fourth example, really just the third example expressed with virtual merchandise?  I was involved in a non-cash transaction (getting credit for a game bug) and ended up receiving something with monetary value, even if it wasn't transferable to real money.  Should I have ignored the transaction and kept the funds? 

Each one of us operates with our own moral and ethical code.  For some of us, the ethical code is situational.  What applies in one situation does not apply in another.  Bribe an official in the United States and you could go to prison.  Don't bribe an official in some third world countries and you could go to prison.  Even my ethics are clearly situational.  If I found a twenty dollar bill on the floor in the metro with no one standing nearby I wouldn't try to find the owner.  However, if I found a cell phone on the ground in the ballpark, I would definitely try find  the owner and get it back to them.  If you were reading carefully, my virtual ethics are also situational.  If I had received slightly more than expected of truly virtual goods, I would not have mentioned it.  In this case, however, my ethical radar went off, and my personal ethical code forced me to return the virtual merchandise. 

Feel free to tell me I was silly, but I feel much better about playing the game today than I did yesterday with my ill-gotten gains.

Guilty pleasures - or why I need to stop watching American Idol

Everyone has guilty pleasures, those things that we do, read, or watch that we are ever so slightly or very ashamed to share with others, for whatever reason.  I know I have mine.  I like playing silly games online.  OK, I'm addicted (Addiction) to silly online games! I enjoy reading Nora Roberts and other chick lit for a quick pick-me-up and I watch a few reality TV shows, in particular American Idol and Project Runway.

For the last couple of years of American Idol I have noticed a significant trend.  The favorite I have picked at the beginning has made it into the five, occasionally to the top two, but hasn't won.  Except for one recent season, I seem to have an uncanny knack for favoring runners up and also-rans.  Some of favorites from years past?  Chris Daughtry - season 5, eliminated in 4th (winner Taylor Hicks); Melinda Doolittle - season 6, eliminated in 3rd (winner Jordan Sparks); David Cook - season 7 winner, OK, I agree with this one; Adam Lambert - season 8, came in second (winner Kris Allen); Crystal Bowersox - season 9, came in second (winner Lee DeWyze).

I don't know who will win season 10, but I can tell you that it won't be James Durbin, my favorite.  He was eliminated last night in 4th place.  Guilty pleasures are supposed to be just that, pleasure.  In the case of American Idol, it hasn't turned out that way recently...

Blood from a stone

I believe that donating blood is an important mitzvah (charitable act).  It is one of those few activities for non-medical personnel where you know that you have the potential to save a life.  I also know that I am apparently missing an antibody that normally appears in childhood (I wonder what disease I didn't have?) and that makes my blood particularly attractive to premature infants.   Interestingly, I just learned from the Red Cross website that the plasma from my AB+ blood is also particularly attractive. However, for years, the actual capability to donate eluded me.  I just didn't have enough iron to give consistently.

These days (thank you menopause) I tip over the scale regularly, though not by much.  There is a drive at work four times a year, and I try hard to make an appointment and go every time.  Nevertheless, the aftereffects of giving blood seem to be more and more draining as I get older.  Yesterday was one of those times.  I ate breakfast and lunch, and thought I was drinking enough.  I felt fine when I started, but by the end, once again, I was flat on my back with my knees up, trying hard not to faint.  For the rest of the day I felt light-headed and fuddled. 

I already have my appointment for July, and I will keep going back.  Perhaps I can figure out some way to avoid the difficulties next time.  I need to keep telling myself that without my blood, another person might die.  I can only hope that thought continues to outweigh the after effects.

•The number of blood donations collected in the U.S. in a year: 16 million (2006).
•The number of blood donors in the U.S. in a year: 9.5 million (2006).
•The number of patients who receive blood in the U.S. in a year: 5 million (2006).
•Share of the U.S. population eligible to give blood: Less than 38 percent.
•Blood cannot be manufactured – it can only come from generous donors.

Mother's Day blahs

If mother's day is a Hallmark holiday, why did I let it get to me?  More specifically, why did I let my husband's lack of celebration get to me?  Phone calls from all three children, check.  Called mother and mother-in-law, check.  Card from husband, check.  So why did it leave me feeling so blah. 

The truth is, I am NOT my husband's mother, I am the mother of his children.  When they were little it made some sense that he would stand surrogate for them in the celebration, but somehow it has become traditional for men to celebrate and honor their wives on mother's day.  In our family, my husband started a tradition of "kitchen" gifts.  It wasn't one I loved, but at least I knew there would be something useful or convenient or needed - though no one really "needed" the waffle iron, and it was clear to me that the only person who was ever going to make waffles (a time consuming and messy job since they are made from scratch) was me.  Some years, my children remember and send a card, or a plant, or cut flowers, some not, but that's not the issue.  I am in shock when I received a gift from my children.  Of course they are modeling my/our behavior.  We call and don't give gifts to our own mothers.

So why did this year leave me so flat.  It wasn't the lack of a gift, though I do like getting presents.  It was the "plans" for the day.  We are still in the midst of a remodel, the result of a tree falling in a storm.  The remodeling plans for this week include paint on the main floor and in the upstairs hallway.  The painters are not responsible for patching holes in the upstairs hall, just painting it.  That means someone had to patch the largish holes in the hollow core doors.  My husband started the task (with my son's help) during Passover, but there it stayed, ostensibly because he couldn't figure out how to mix the Bondo that made up the next step.  The "plans" for the day (as dictated by my husband) involved preparing for painting.  Guess who got to finish the hole repairs? Mixing and applying Bondo?  And sand?  And Spackle?  And sand...  Perhaps if those were the only items on the "Honey Do" list I might have managed to relax afterward, but they weren't.  The list went on, and every time (it felt) like I managed to relax, there was another item.  The day was choppy and disjointed.

I did manage to spend a little time at my sewing machine, but I still feel disappointed.  I recognize that my disappointment is unrealistic.  The tasks do need to get done, but I will be very happy when this remodel is complete, when the kitchen is complete, and when (maybe) I can find a day to do just what I want to do -- without interruption.  Maybe Father's Day?

Kitty hospice

I have a 16 year old American Short Hair (read mutt).  Caroline has had some medical issues along the way.  She has had a heart murmer since she was a kitten, and was diagnosed and treated for thyroid cancer about 7 years ago - does a cat treated with radioactive iodine have 18 half lives? - but she has been mostly healthy until about a year ago.  Then she was diagnosed with kidney disease.  We switched her to KD cat food, and her enzymes have been stable, though she has continued to lose weight.

I went to the vet this week and just got the lab results back.  Her creatinine has gone way up.  The vet is doing his best to prepare us for what is coming, but I am feeling weepy.  She has had a good life.  We have decided that we are not going to use any extreme measures (with potential side effects and pain) to prolong her life, but are giving her medication to control vomitting, and as long as she tolerates it, that will help to make her feel better.  Think of it as kitty hospice. The vet says that as long as she continues to eat, use her litterbox, and move around, we don't need to intervene.  When she stops eating it means that everything is shutting down and it will be time to help her to die peacefully. 

I can't imagine her not being with us.  I can't imagine not having a cat and my husband keeps saying she is the "one and only."  He does not want another kitty.  She has been a member of our family for a very long time.  Hopefully this stage will last a long time, but I need to prepare since there is no way to know whether it will be fast or slow.

I love my sweet Caroline

PS  This is not meant to belittle or make fun of hospice programs.  My father and both my uncles benefitted from well run hospice programs and they provide invaluable service to families handling end of life situations.

De-friending. What is friendship in the age of Facebook

I had dinner with an older friend and neighbor recently and she asked an interesting question, "what does friend mean today?"  She comented that she considered that she had a few friends and many acquaintances.  She wondered how her grandchildren could have so many friends.  While I don't have quite as strict a definition of friend (I do believe that friend can be qualified by adjectives: best, close, casual) I understand her question.  People today claim many friends, but what does that word mean?

Of course her question related directly to Facebook.  Social media has definitely changed the definition of friendship.  Friend is now a verb as well as a noun.   On Facebook, users may have friends they have never met face-to-face.  Suddenly these friends are sharing details of day-to-day lives, looking at shared photographs, and depending on security settings, reading information from friends of friends.  So are these people friends in my neighbor's sense of the word?  No, they are not, but that is a direct result of a change in the meaning of the word.

Words change meaning over time.  Two that come immediately to mind are mistress and gay.  In previous centuries, Mistress used to be a title of courtesy for a woman who had no title of her own.  If you weren't a Lady, adding Mistress to your name was a courtesy.  Even thirty-five years ago, gay meant loud, boisterous, and lively. Has "friend" changed its meaning?  Clearly.  Without clarification, friend has little meaning.  I can talk about my best friend from high school, my neighborhood friends, my online quilting friends, and my facebook gaming friends.  They are not the same, and should not be confused.  Some friends are physical and some are virtual but all are real.

What does that mean for de-friending.  Before Facebook, friends did come and go.  Over time, new friends became more important and old friends disappeared, vanished into the mists of time or distance.  I remember former friends with fondness, often when I use a wedding present or reminisce about old times.  These friends were not "dropped" because we stopped being friends for a specific reason, but because we grew apart.  On Facebook, one click will drop a friend.  Suddenly your former friend can no longer see your posts, your photos, and the information you share.  I have only de-friended one person.  I regret that I did so, but don't think I want to re-friend the person either.  Has it become too easy to make and drop friends?  Does it really matter? 

This is a rambling blog post, but it had a kernel at its base.  I discovered today I had been de-friended by someone I liked in both the real and the virtual world.  I met her through one of my children.  I understand her reasons but I still feel sad about losing the contact.  I wish her all the best, and hope that at some point she will feel willing to renew our friendship.

Trying to teach a security lesson at work - some folks learn the hard way

Computer security at work is a touchy subject.  In a consulting firm, where everyone is on the same team, why bother to lock your computer.  It's a pain having to lock it every time you get up and unlock it when you return.  I'm not talking about the physical locks that chain your laptop to a desk, though those are important, I am talking about locking your screen so that others cannot see your work or mess with your data. 

I was probably as lax as the next person until I spent a few month working with a small team in an office on-site at a government agency.  While the work wasn't secret, it was sensitive, and everyone in the space quickly learned not to walk away from an unlocked computer.  The first time I did I returned to an upside down display, and the lessons escalated.  The goal was not to damage work, but to make sure that you locked your computer so that no one else with malicious intent could damage your work.  It made sense under the circumstances, we worked in a small but readily accessible space.  Anyone walking in could easily read the data on an unattended computer.  Even though badges were required, and suite access was restricted, you never really knew when someone might stop by who didn't have "need to know."

I now work on-site as a contractor at a different government agency.  There is a very clear agency policy, and a very clear office policy, that all computers must be locked when unattended.  The agency is very conscious of the concept of "insider threat" and locking your desktop when you walk away is one way to prevent unnecessary access.  The strangers in the suite look innocuous, and downstairs security cleared them, and called up, but are they always where they should be?  Are they really escorted at all times? 

I have a split personality.  I am very lackadaisical about some things, about others I am almost obsessive compulsive.  Locking your computer every time you leave the office is one of my obsessions.  I share an office with three other people.  In fact, one of the desks is shared by multiple users, so it could be as many as six or seven different people during the week.  Each time someone new sits at that rotating desk I begin the training process.  I start with gentle reminders, "don't forget to lock your computer,"  and progress to small messages left on the screen or changing screen savers.  The next step is sending an email from the users account, usually to another colleague, though sometimes to the user himself.  They all know it's me, and they all know I would never willfully harm data or view what they are working on.

Today I think the lesson sank in for my latest "victim."  I knew he was meeting in one of the other offices with a colleague, and I sent that colleague an "I quit" email from the victim's account.  When he returned he acknowledged that he should have locked his computer.  Hopefully he got the message.

So next time you stand up from your computer, press CTRL-ALT-DEL then Enter, or even easier, the Windows key (next to Alt on the right on my keyboard) and L at the same time, and avoid a visit from the nasty computer security fairy!

One Note, lest you think I have a death, or more accurately, unemployment wish, if I happen to be in a Fed office and notice that the computer was left unlocked, I lock it immediately and leave a post it note stating "The computer fairy locked your computer.  Please don't forget to lock it when you leave the office."

Cantorial music in Synagogue: Pro or Con. Discuss.

I have not been an Orthodox Jew all my life.   Nor did I grow up in the Reform movement.  That means I missed both the end of the golden age of cantorial music (1960s) and the cantorial led prayer services of the large Reform Temples.  My Conservative synagogue was founded by intellectuals and businessmen who wanted something different from the rigid experience they saw in the Orthodox synagogue, but hewing more closely to standard tradition than the Reform movement practiced in the 50s and 60s.  I grew up with lay leaders and the occasional Rabbi, chosen for his spiritual leadership rather than his voice.

My path to Orthodox tradition in college did focus on the music, but it was music with an emphasis on group singing and ruach (spirit) rather than operatic highs and lows.  From then until now I have somehow managed to avoid synagogues with cantors, sticking primarily to the Young Israel movement, and offshoots thereof.  In those environments, lay leadership was emphasized, probably partially for monetary reasons, but also for philosophical ones as well.  These were "involved" communities, and cantorial music can separate instead of inspire if not carefully thought out.

It was therefore with scepticism that I heard about the plans my synagogue had to cantor to be scholar in residence for Shabbat this past week.  My experience with cantors primarily came from brief visits at synagogues with cantors, and from experiencing some cantor "wannabes."  However, I made a decision that I would attend the Saturday morning service with an open mind, and I believe I was successful.

First, the visiting cantor did not change my mind completely about the cantorial genre.  I would not want to attend a synagogue where there was a permanent paid cantor, nor would I want to attend a service that had a cantor once a month or even once every several months.  I also don't think I would want one to lead the service on the High Holidays, the service is long enough as it is, and my attention span just isn't that great.  However, this particular cantor had a very lovely voice (well I could have skipped the falsetto), and most of his musical selections managed to avoid the kvetching/crying tone that has turned me off in the past.  I particularly liked his rendition of the Prayer for the State of Israel, a piece he composed himself.  I did not find that he detracted from my kavannah (loosely translated as spiritual intent) and the service didn't drag on painfully.  If the synagogue chooses to bring him back next year, I would go again.

However, I have a serious concern.  We have a number of people who lead the service in our synagogue regularly.  Some have sweeter voices than others.  NONE are professionally trained musicians.  If any of them thinks that this Shabbat gives them the license to "perform" during Shabbat morning services, I will be seriously pissed.  Lead the prayers,don't race, don't drag, and please, for heaven's sake, if you really can't carry a tune or read Hebrew, let someone else who can do both take your place..

I wish I were quilting

The house is progressing.  We have a roof, new trusses, insulation, ceiling, and walls.  We have chosen paint colors, and it looks like I am going to get my granite countertops and tile backsplash since life is already disrupted.  However, life IS disrupted, big time, and it looks like things will be getting worse not better in the short term.

When the workmen started tearing out the ceiling in the kitchen, many items got moved.  Somehow a large number of items ended up in on and around my sewing area.  Since every other surface in the intact part of the house is similarly encumbered I'm not really complaining, but I want my sewing machine back.  I want to spend a day looking at fabric, or cutting, or pinning, or sewing. 

I know this is an excellent opportunity to complete some of the handwork I have been ignoring, but what I really want is access to my machine.  I am looking forward to no more workmen and everything new and fresh again ... and a solid day or two at the machine.

Knitting Socks? Not quite the ROI I expected ... at least so far.

I learned to knit this past summer.  My first grandchild was due in August and I felt that all grandmothers should know how to knit, so I took a class.  Three lessons.  I don't know if it was me, or my teacher, but it clicked right away.  My first project was a sweater for the new baby, then a hat and scarf for me, and currently in progress is a sweater, also for me. 

But I kept reading about socks, knitted socks.  Everybody seemed to be making socks.  They even have wars - sock wars - death by socks: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119766934184930123.html.  Every time I looked at the class listings for my LYS (Local Yarn Store) there were numerous sock classes: toe up, top down, two at a time.  What's a girl to do?  I had to see what all the hype was about.  Maybe I would make socks too.  Surely they couldn't be that complicated?  In January I signed up for a February sock class.  Toe up sock knitting, to be precise. 

Let's take a look at the tally

• $100 - Class Fee
• $21 - Special sock yarn, Georgia Peach by three Irish girls
• $20~ - Two small circular needles (not quite sure - no receipt handy)
• $10.50 - Stitch counter

So not counting tax, this particular pair of socks costs about $150.  Of course you can argue that the needles and stitch counter are reusable, and that's true, but still that works out to about $60 a sock.  Then there's the time.  If I had participated in sock wars, I would have been the first one dead.  I have been knitting since early February.  For the entire month of March I have knitted almost every day on the metro, and lots of evenings in front of the TV.  I am about 20 rows shy of completion on my second sock!

What did I learn?  I probably won't make a lot of pairs of socks.  Aside from the cost, the time commitment doesn't seem worth it, and someone is going to WALK ON THEM!!  My goodness, all that labor and it might get ruined.  Nevertheless, I don't believe I wasted either time or money.  I had only ever worked with worsted weight yarn and size 7 or 8 needles.  Size 1 needles will never seem quite as scary again.  I also learned to knit short rows, how to do 4 needle construction using 2 circular needles, and how to do a simple lace/eyelet pattern. 

What I really learned?  Don't look at the return on investment (ROI) for a hobby based on the cost and end product, it's the learning process and the pleasure it brings along the way that counts.

Bragging - we all have to do it once in a while!

My youngest son has a rocky school history.  His road to college has been circuitous, and continues to be fraught with difficulties.  He currently attends an art school in NY, and is in the second half of his junior year on his way to a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in fashion design.  His ideal career would be as a menswear fashion designer.  Does anyone have a job for him?  A summer internship?

But that isn't the purpose of my post, nor are previous academic successes, including several semesters on the Dean's list and President's list.  This semester has been particularly rocky, for reasons unassociated with schooling, and he has been struggling to keep up in classes and stay focused.  One participatory factor in his struggles was that the school required all members of the junior class to submit a portfolio for the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) scholarship competition (http://www.cfda.com/scholarship-program/).  The scholarship program offers financial awards to top students from art schools across the country in several categories and through several competitive programs, the junior class scholarship program being the primary method. 

At my son's school, the work for CFDA started early in the semester, and forced him into many late nights and all-nighters as he worked through his themes, his designs, and technical details.  My son is a perfectionist, having great difficulty in letting go of the smallest detail, and worrying over minutiae others might miss.  His submission went down to the last minute, including major technical difficulties (at one point earlier in the process he lost 4 hours worth of design work when his computer crashed) and files too larger for the printer's computer.  However, he was notified yesterday that the school has selected him as one of five entrants from the school to move forward to the main competition.

This has been a major boost to his mood, since he considers being selected as an honor.  I am glad he sees it that way, since the odds of winning are still only 1 in 10; better than they were before, but definitely not a shoe-in.  So that is my brag!  I hope that in May I will have the opportunity to brag about winning, but in case I don't, I wanted to have this opportunity to publicly state how proud I am of him and his achievements.  He has come a long way from struggling through high school.

The year of the red (dead) oak?

This is clearly the year of the oak tree, at least in my neighborhood.  In our January snowstorm a very large red oak fell on my house, doing 30-60K of damage.  The final total is unknown since they haven't started rebuilding yet.  Though we are living in the house, our roof is covered with a tarp, and our ceiling is open to the roof.

Last night, as Washington received the last of its 1-3" of rain, a similarly large oak fell on my neighbor's property,  fortunately delivering only a glancing blow to the house.  I am grateful that they are only dealing with exterior damage, and that once again, no one was injured.

All this is by way of explaining why no blog posts...  Hopefully I can get back to it now that the excitement is over.

Silence, Golden or Tense

I don't have a problem with silence.  Despite what some people think about me, I don't have to fill it.  But I never realized until recently that silence can be hostile.  I have experienced companionable silence.  It happens in my house most days, and used to happen in my office all the time.  Broken by a comment, or a joke, or a piece of shared information, the silence served to encourage everyone to get work accomplished in a collegial environment. 

These days, silence in my office is hostile.  It is rigidly maintained and enforced.  It discourages cooperation and collaboration, it precludes knowledge sharing and growth, it is driving away team members, and strengthening the divides, rather than bridging them. 

Silence filled with music is still silence.  But the need to bridge the silence is becoming acute, and it takes more than one person to accomplish the task.  In this case it takes two; one to say "Good morning,"  the other to respond.

Can we please start to bridge the gap?  For everyone's sake?

Thoughts on civility

I have been thinking a lot about civility lately.  What it means, and what effect it has on our daily interactions with others.

There are numerous definitions online, but the one that struck home was Merriam-Webster's "a : civilized conduct; especially : courtesy, politeness b : a polite act or expression."  


Being civil to others is a sign of maturity.  That means opening doors for someone, or holding the door and allowing someone to walk through first -- not just men to women, but women to women, and women to men. It means holding the elevator door, and not talking on your cellphone (or texting) in a movie.  


Acts of civility set us apart from other animals, and unfortunately, it is something that seems to be disappearing from certain parts off society.  Pushing and shoving and cutting in line, the me first attitude is not restricted to the Me First generation. 


Perhaps my lament for the death of civility is driven by recent experiences, and by a creeping desire to be uncivil that I am seeing in myself.  It is not a pleasant feeling when I find myself wanting to stab the "Close" button on the elevator, or I am frustrated because someone else nabbed the last good seat on the metro train (not the last seat, just the last good one). 


So what can I do to return civility to my life.  I can make an effort to hold the elevator door; to offer my seat on the metro to someone older than I; to hold the door for someone whose arms are full; and to continue to say good morning and how are you to the person who never responds and never returns the greeting.  


But if it drives that person crazy that I speak to them at all, am I being civil by saying "good morning,"  or is that the ultimate act of incivility!

If you can read, thank a tutor, or maybe Harry Potter

My youngest son, now 23 is dyslexic.  His isn't the traditional issue of reversing letters (think of the jokes about dogs and gods) or transposition (pod and bod), but something called "sound symbol recognition."  For the most part, readers don't sound out the words they see, they know them, having learned hundreds of sight words along the path to fluent reading.  For most readers, acquiring a new sight word takes a few repetitions.  The more complex the word, the more repetitions, but we get it after a few repeats, certainly less than a dozen or so.  My poor son, on the other hand can take 50 or more repetitions for each sight word.  His learning disability was once described in terms of running a road race, except on a stationary treadmill.  You are running just as hard as the other runners, but you may never make it to the finish line.

Although my son was identified as having a learning issue in nursery school, his wonderful parents didn't believe it was a significant problem until he was in 2nd grade when he was tested for the first time.  And thus began the rounds of in school and out of school therapies.  We tried many methods, and IEPs, and accommodations, until finally we were directed to T.  The hours with T weren't easy, and in order to make it work, tutoring had to be 2-4 days a week.  A large burden for a small child.  My son never really liked the sessions, although he tolerated them, mostly.  Only occasionally would he rebel, throw a temper tantrum, and storm out of a session.  But T persevered, through set backs and rages, and together T and my son worked there way through the series of books called the Wilson Reading Program and out the other side.  I still remember 7th grade, and the day he first picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a book that his entire school (The Lab School of Washington) was reading in one way or another, and read for pleasure.

Since that first day with Harry Potter, my son has read fantasy and adventure, branching into Clive Cussler and other authors occasionally, but coming back to one of his favorites, R. A. Salvatore, any time a new book is published.  But what he reads for pleasure isn't what is important.  It is the fact that he reads, and enjoys reading.  For that, in no small part, I must thank T.

I was in the library recently, using it as an extension of my office to get some work done.  I was sitting around the corner from a desk where a tutor was working with a young boy, 7 or 8.  I listened to the instructions and sophisticated language of the tutor as she taught the child about phonemes and the formation of sounds in the mouth, and heard once again the delicately accented English of my son's former tutor.   At first I could not believe that after 12 years, I would run into T in this fashion, but sure enough, when I stood and looked around the corner, I recognized her, and she me.  She sent regards to my son, and was delighted to here of his current activities, a junior studying fashion design in New York, and sent her regards.  I, in turn, told her that she deserved much of the credit for the fact that my son now reads for pleasure.  I am not sure she was convinced, but she accepted the compliment anyway.

But I think now, as I thought then, that my son enjoys reading today for two reasons, T and the hard work they did together, and J.K. Rowling.  Thank you both!

Temper

I have always known that I had a hair-trigger temper.  Fortunately my anger disappears just as quickly.  Once I have exploded and vented, I am calm again and ready to go on.   My family knows about that hair-trigger temper too.  I can get blisteringly angry in a nano-second.  Screaming angry.  Red in the face angry.  Slamming doors angry.  Throwing things angry. 

I do manage to restrain myself, for the most part, from actually damaging things, though I once threw a wallet at my husband.  Lesson to learn?  Never throw your wallet at your husband in the kitchen unless you are absolutely certain that the cards are well secured.  I was fishing items out from under the refrigerator for days.  I also once hit a pane of glass with the edge of a fist.  I was lucky I didn't severely injure myself.  I had to replace that pane of glass (the center one in a nine-pane front door) with a piece of plexi-glass.  Did you know plexi-glass melts?  Neither did I until years later when I had a major house fire and that pane of glass melted. 

However both of those incidents were more than 20 years ago.  While my husband regularly accuses me of yelling, I haven't gotten dangerously angry in a long time.  Certainly not at home, and of course that slamming doors, screaming, red in the face anger never came out at work.  I kept it in control  I wouldn't say I was the calmest person in the world, but even provoked I was never livid in the way I occasionally am at home.  I always thought I knew the reason.  I felt safe at home.  My family was going to love me and respect me no matter what I did.  My colleagues might/probably wouldn't understand.

So why then have I reached the point of rage at least twice in the past month?  It is absolutely inappropriate.  It is damaging my work reputation.  It is destructive to my relationships with my colleagues.  It is self-destructive, and needs to stop. 

Thoughts?  Valium?