A Week In: How's It Going?

You may recall my whining a week ago about suddenly being surprised with a BYUI teaching contract this semester. How are things going? That is the tale I am about to tell.

It's . . . okay. I'd still rather have the semester off. However, as I mentioned previously the money is welcome. And I do have a refreshing mix of students, most of whom appear to be concurrent enrollment students who are also in high school. They tend to be pretty motivated individuals, which always helps.

Not that my other students aren't motivated. Maybe motivated and surrounded by privilege is the better way to put it. And not in a bad way. They just don't have the struggles that my typical mix of students have.

Trying not to put too much detail in there, I guess . . .

I have spent two long evenings this week with student conferences, something I really did not want to do. But I've put on the stiff upper lip and done it. I have more to do Friday and Saturday, but I can see the end of them now. I also gave myself a break Tuesday and Thursday, so I'm not doing them every day this week. That meant more piled into Monday and Wednesday, but it was worth it.

TOO MANY BOOKS. No Such Thing, of Course . . .

The books continue piling up in this house. I have had to add another shelf in the study, and should probably consider adding a couple more, but for now it's at the limit. Below, shelves in the closet. I still have a mess of things to clean up on the bottom shelf.

Next the shelves above my work computer.
 

Then on the far wall, next to my personal computer.

This is where the new (third) shelf is.

Part of the reason for all of this is that I have books in my closet upstairs I want to move down here. I've been only partly successful with that, and part of it came with sorting through my Peanuts paperbacks and giving duplicates to my son, who also has a physical media hoarding problem, so all I'm really doing there is enabling.

Why am I moving the books out of the closet? Well, because we took our CD shelves down and now I need a place to put the CDs. I wanted to put them in the study, but there's just no room here (particularly now that I've added more bookshelves) so they're going to go in the closet where the recently-removed books were. At least temporarily until I can figure out how to empty and get rid of a filing cabinet in the study so I can put the CD shelves on the wall where it stands. It's all very complicated.

The re-shelving has resulted in some relocation of wall art (mostly collections of BSA patches and other similar items). I'm having to get inventive:

It's not my proudest moment, but the patches must be displayed: They're 50th anniversary patches of the scout camp I went to as a kid and where my family works all summer.

And oh yeah, more books. Part of that shelf is occupied by toner cartridges for a laser printer. They'll be finding a new home soon, to make way for yet more books that are in my closet. Maybe they can go in said closet, just to make a point.

Again with The Hermit of Iapetus

NOTE: Trying this again. A new tack. New ideas coming. That's a good thing, right?

Only Nixon, the old Vulcan proverb goes, could go to China.

Just perhaps, however, he might consider crossing the wide Missouri with me, as I undertake a voyage.

. . .

"There's no chance of rescue," the bursar said. "Nor, of course, even a guarantee we could get you there. Not that it's far. It's just . . . uncommon. There's no one - nothing - there. You'd be alone."

"Yes."

The bursar was silent.

"If it's a question of money -"

"No," he said. "Hardly. Well almost hardly. The orbit surcharge is a pittance when the entire voyage is considered. Mathematicians go cheap these days. And freight, well, almost negligible, considering. Where it's all dead load, and you said - you did say - you'd gather it all up, no matter where it fell. But . . it's the -"

"Isolation, yes," I said. "That's the idea."

"Communication. Intermittent at best. Then we just don't know, as there's no one there. And the debris fields. The radiation."

"The solitude. The room for introspection. The possibility."

"The poisons. It's toxic enough - well, is likely toxic enough-"

"It's fine," I said. "We're used to toxicity."

"We?"

"He said he'd come with me."

"Yes," the bursar said, circling a finger around an ear, catching the planning officer's eye. "You mentioned him. Free on board, I believe we agreed?"

"Yes," I said. "The company is most generous on that point."

Silence, broken only by a sniff from the planning officer.

"And the ship is called," I asked after a moment.

The bursar tapped at the keyboard. "Shenandoah."

"Then the voyage has already begun."

I'm going to take some advice from some writing instructions given to our students this week -- set parts of my writing to different music. This song is for the first part of the book. Other parts will feature Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" and "San Antonio Rose" by Patsy Cline.

Doomed. Maybe Doomed.

Christianity, online, is . . . *interesting.*

Or doomed. Maybe doomed is the better way to say it.

Saw this meme on the Facebooks tonight, for example:

So maybe the meme goes a little overboard, blotting out things that don't necessarily have to do with judgment. But reading the comments. Oh, the comments. Context is everything. And it seems like the context people want is context that allows them to be . . . judgy.

So here's the pertinent context:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

I am an imperfect person. Every time I manage to cast a beam out of the ol' peeper, more settle in or pop to the surface.

Context: Don't judge because you, yourself, are imperfect. Maybe work on your own sins and shortcomings before you dare judge others. Does that mean we don't offer help? No. Does that mean we don't pray for others? No. But it does mean we don't judge. Context or otherwise, "Do not judge" seems to be the kernel of these passages.

But boy are folks bent out of shape. They want context. Context so they can judge, it seems. And maybe I'm wrong; it's hard to see through all these beams.

Read if you dare.

No Longer Flickering

You may recall a month or two ago my shenanigans of trying to fix the flickering LED light fixture we have in our basement. I reattached wiring. I got rid of excess wiring. I replaced switches. Nothing worked.

I can report today a tentative victory: We have replaced the light fixture. And it's twin. So they'll match.

I hope the fix lasts.

Yes, riveting photo of the cardboard boxes that held the new lights. But a photo of the installed lights would be just as exciting. Ignore the broken banister behind the boxes; that's on my list of things to do, possibly this summer. I'm dragging my feet on that because the stairs themselves need replacing or extensive repair -- whoever installed the carpet on them nailed the carpet to the treads, with horseshoe nails -- and I'm not sure I'm up to that yet.

I Got Responses

Remember that little screed I sent to the state legislature (or at least my representatives) earlier this week?

I got responses.

Rep. Horman is a sponsor of the bill. Gracious response.

Rep. Mickelsen is more of a moderate, and clearly is of the same mind I am.

Hire Human Beings. Be A Human Being

Reading in Theodore Rockwell's "The Rickover Effect," a biography of Admiral Hyman Rickover, who was a driving force in developing the Nuclear Navy. It's a pretty fascinating look at the man and his role in developing the nascent military-industrial complex, but with the aim of increased efficiency and lower costs. (The bad of the complex came in afterward, I'm convinced.) Anyway, I thought this bit was an interesting look at how Rickover picked people to work with his program:

"Admiral [a subordinate said], I can't figure you out. You just washed eight guys down the drain with the back of your hand, and now you're going to spend hours on the plane tonight to make a possible small difference in somebody else's career. How come?"

"These are my people, [Rickover said]. That's the difference. Dunford, did you ever really look at the kind of people I've brought in here?"

"Yes, sir, of course. And I've heard people from industry and from research laboratories say that this organization has the highest concentration of bright young engineering talent in the country."

"You still don't get it. Our senior scientist has a master's degree in electrical engineering ahd an Ph.D in physics. But he is also an ordained Orthodox rabbi, and highly devout. He has spent many a twenty-four hour day in an airport because the sun had started to set on a Friday and his religion forbade his traveling. Our senior metallurgist is so highly regarded by the Mormon church that I'm afraid they're going to pull him out of here for a top position in Salt Lake City someday. One of our chemical engineers ia a leader in the Church of the savior, a particularly respected evangelical church here in town. And now I've had a request from one of our people for six weeks off so that he may make the pilgrimage to Mecca required by his faith. These are very spiritual people. They are not just technicians, they are highly developed human beings."

Rickover clearly wanted human beings working for him. He wanted people who showed dedication in every aspect of their lives, not merely exerting dedication in certain areas, like work. He wanted people who were well-rounded, who stood up for what they believed in, even if it didn't apply to the technical work they did for him.

The book mentions earlier that the metallurgist in question is Richard G. Scott, who did indeed answer several calls to serve in Salt Lake City, as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy from 1977 to 1983, when he was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles until his death in 2015.

Rickover knew his people well, and wanted to treat them well because they were willing to giver their all. A good example for me to follow.

Making Democracy Harder

Representatives Mickelsen and Horman,

I want to go on record as a constituent in opposition to House Bill No. 2, which bears the intention of limiting Idaho residents' ability to be involved directly in democratic (with a small d, mind you) participation in state government.

The proposition process has its flaws. Requiring a 60% threshold for propositions to appear on the ballot adds another flaw. Making it harder for Idaho citizens to participate directly in democracy is a bad look for any legislator of any stripe. Supporting this bill isn't going to reduce growing cynicism towards government and the elected agents that run it.

I know the entrenched Republican party felt threatened by the push last year to reopen primaries, and had that effort not been paired with ranked choice voting, I believe the open primary effort would have passed. Voters saw the flaw in the proposition and voted it down, but the proposition system allowed us that opportunity. I'm sure you've felt the same way when bills you viewed as flawed didn't become law, but at least you're in a position to directly affect outcomes. Don't make it harder for Idahoans to do the same.

Sincerely,

A Dissatisfied Customer*

*Not my actual signoff to the legislators, just doing my part to protect my personal information.

My Perfect Sunk Cost Fallacy

For reasons, I found myself in need of a current resume earlier this week.

As many would, I first searched the Indiana Jonesesque pile of paper and electronic files I have amassed to see if I could find a past resume I could start with, but I came up with nothing.

So as many would afterward, I turned to the Internet to find a resume template.

My internet search led me to myperfectresume.com. I looked that site over, and a few others, before I went back to them to build a resume.

They make the job pretty easy, providing templates and even offering artificial intelligence services to write for me (hard pass on that, thankyouverymuch).

I spent probably an hour on the resume. Then I tried to download it.

Should have seen this coming: They wanted me to sign up for a subscription service in order to do so. Hard pass.

Sure, it wasn't all that much money. And I had spent that hour on their website making the resume. The good ol' Sunken Cost Fallacy popped up hard.

So I took screenshots and redid the resume in Microsoft Word and it didn't cost me a penny.

But myperfectresume.com has my email address. So this kind of thing is ongoing:

(Sorry for the blurriness. I wanted to capture their email in one image, so it's been blown up a bit here. Maybe it'll look better when it's published.)

Clearly, putting the hand out is something I should have expected from them. And putting it at the end of the process certainly brings in the sunk cost concept -- I've already invested time in building a resume, and I can see it there it's all done and pretty and I really want to be done with this, so give in and give them money is the end result. Except I didn't.

Unsubscribing now, of course.

And even in the unsubscribing the sunk cost arises: They warn me potential employers won't be able to contact me through their service. As if employers are trolling through myperfectresume.com for potential hires.

Silence is What?

After I watched "Room Service," the last of the Marx Brothers movies I bought over the weekend, I decided to watch one of the shorts included on the DVD, a Daffy Duck cartoon titled "The Daffy Doc."

It's from Daffy's manic period, with lots of woo-hooing going on throughout. In addition to including some Carl Stalling music I recognized from one of my CDs but had never heard in context with a cartoon, it also included Daffy holding up the following sign, after the surgeon he was assisting asked for quiet in the operating theater:

I have no idea what "foo" means, and after some internet searches, I'm pretty sure no one really grasps the concept.

I did find this blog post from a fellow curiosity-seeker.

It seems to be a pretty comprehensive exploration of the foo phenomenon, though he conflates foo with "foobar," which is actually FUBAR in the context used on the post, but that's excuseable if you've never seen FUBAR in print. FUBAR is mentioned in the dubious "entymology of foo" document linked in the post, as is FOOBAR. Still, I think there's a mixup. Some of what's discussed in the post is due to an author working to capture a dialect in print, so it may not necessarily have any relationship to the word in Daffy's sign.

This dictionary entry adds a bit to the definition, bringing in Australian slang (they wrote "Foo was Here," rather than "Kilroy was Here."

This artificial intelligence roundup (a good use of AI, I think) of definitions is also helpful:

Just some weird little bit of late '30s slang that had a moment in the sun, then disappeared, I suppose.