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Why You Shouldn't Work for People That Treat You Bad

"Listen! It's a tough universe! There's all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you're going to survive out there.... you've really gotta know where your towel is."

- Ford Prefect speaking to Arthur Dent, The Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy

For those of you that know me or have worked with me, I've now arrived at my 18th anniversary in the working world since graduating college back in 1991. That's right, the young'un freshmen arriving at this next school year in the Land of the Jayhawks were born about the time I walked down the Hill. In my journey hopscotching across from Kansas to California, I've had many ups and downs, and many hard lessons, but none so obvious as the one I present tonight.

I've worked in the Tech Biz the whole time and seen many things, but they have been in many different settings-- in everything from telecom to GPS systems to the educational world, to software and hardware companies and little shops installing servers back in the early days of LANs-- but one thing remains the same throughout all of them.

You see, we work in a biz where whatever we work on is going in the trash in a few years. I've installed networks at places and then ripped them out a few years later when they became obsolete. In The Valley, we all work on products that, if you're lucky, end up at Weird Stuff Warehouse. If not, nobody remembers what the hell that stuff even was.

What matters is the people. The relationships you build, the friendships you forge, the technological fire you help stoke to bring the next great thing are what matters. The hardware and software? It all ends up in the junk pile sooner or later. Nobody cares about the balance sheets from twenty years ago or the tech that made them happen. I see the world fly by in sped up Koyaanisqatsi-esque acceleration here in The Valley as I get older, and I've learned that the people last a helluva lot longer than the code and the hardware.

As a consultant slinging cable and hauling servers at all manner of business and shops in Kansas back in the mid-90's, I got to see lots of places. Factory floors, insurance companies, automotive repair shops, art and design places, medical device manufacturers, and all kinds of other places in my travels. Being in Kansas, the weather was terrible and the pay was bad. It was not easy, but I learned some important things.

In my travels I've seen many work environments, many of them meat-grinders. In both Kansas and in Silicon Valley I've seen people get treated badly and had to stand by and watch as I was only the consultant or the SysAdmin. I know because I've watched people spend twenty years at a company and work their entire career there to get dumped in the street, and I was the guy that would have to delete their login and come get their PC. I have watched some particularly nasty pointy-haired bosses do terrible things to their people. I have watched as tech companies got bought by evil and soul-less acquisition corporations only interested in rape and pillage get rid of the very people that made the company what it was, and then wonder why no more products were coming out. I've sat through meetings where the CEO would fire people in front of everyone and then lament why morale was so bad at the company.

I know all too well what working in such places are like, and I know they take years off your life. I have seen co-workers work themselves into sickness and despair. I've had to witness it destroy people when they work under terrible people that are abusive, controlling and nasty, that eventually screw over their people. And I wonder why.

BTW for those of you that understand Scott Adams' humor, the "Dilbert" comic strip is funny because it's true.

So I say unto ye...

Don't work for people that treat you bad. Life is way too short for that.

This may sound like a 'Well, duh!" revelation, but I've seen many people willingly go in and work for places that treated them badly, ragged on them or threatened them, and destroyed their self-esteem, all without paying them what they were worth. You could say it's somewhere between misplaced loyalty and battered-wife syndrome, where the victim defends the abusive husband right up to her own death at his hands. I've seen people willingly go back to such places or work for bosses at new places that treated them badly at the old one.

If you work for people that treat you badly, they probably won't change their mind and treat you better later.

Really.

There are good places to work and I have spent most of my career searching for them, but most of the resignation letters I have written in my career have listed as their first reason that they need to treat their people better, starting now. I have watched places bring in eager and talented people only to screw them over and treat them badly, and then the place collapses and implodes. I've seen it with start-ups, and I've seen it with big corporations in impressive marble buildings. They all crumble sooner or later, and eventually word gets out about such places. Especially with the 'net. The old Chinese adage, "You cannot wrap fire in paper" holds even more true these days.

I realize this may ring hollow for some of you in a recession with a bad economy, but I have personally lived through three Bush Recessions and two economic recoveries from such, and know that these things go in cycles. If you are stuck in a bad place that is grinding you down or messing you up, you and you alone hold the power to someday walk away for a better place. Don't forget that. Sometimes all you can do when you get screwed is pick yourself up and walk away with your dignity, but that's better than staying.</p>

"So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key"

- The Eagles, "Already Gone" (1974)

The same thing holds true for things you do for fun, across any fandom. About ten years ago I actually worked on staff at Renaissance Faires with my friends, and we worked for a tempermental guy with long, flowing hair that was always cranky and irritable. Sometimes he was a great guy, and the rest of the time he was insufferable. For some reason he needed a new staff to work his booth at Faire, and we figured, what the hell, we could get passes if we worked Faire and drink till we passed out. He dicked people over and drove them away before my friends and I walked away a year or two later. As one of them said, "I'd never put up with that sort of crap for my day job! What the hell was I doing putting up for it for free in my spare time?".

If you're doing something for fun and it stops being fun because the people you have to deal with are terrible, is it for fun any more?

If there was any song I could FTP to my younger self when I eagerly walked down the Hill on graduating college 18 years ago about what the future would hold, it would be Kenny Rogers' The Gambler, with the ever-popular refrain that I remember as a kid:

"You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away, know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done."

- Kenny Rogers, "The Gambler"

My Dad was a research scientist for one of the Big Pharma companies in the Chicago area. In 2003, After 17 years of working there, his company gets bought by an even bigger Pharma company and sells the deal to the shareholders that they can eliminate 20,000 jobs and entire research facilities. My Dad took the retirement buyout and my parents moved out to the West Coast to start a new life when my Mom took a job at a biotech firm that, it turns out, was a particularly dysfunctional and messed-up place to be that, as it turned out, treated her badly. She wanted out, but was stuck there on a contract and a big signing bonus that they bought a big, fancy house with. She spent most of her night stressed out, upset and in tears because of the company, and after she got out of there she went into retirement, three years ago. I was so happy for her getting away from such a place.

Folks, my mother died on August 7, 2009. I hold her ashes now as we plan her funeral and burial, and the big, fancy house that she and my Dad worked so hard for remains empty as he lies a hospital bed. Was all that job-related stress and pain that my mother went through for the fancy house and the perfectly manicured lawn worth it? She taught me the most important lesson of all... life is short. You can either spend it doing things that make you unhappy for people that will use you and treat you terribly, or you can do what makes you happy, for people that will help you chase your dreams... If you're not afraid to go seek them out.

The choice is up to all of you people, in all the paths you choose to follow in all your lives. Think about it, and Go Forth and Decide. For only you have the power to change your situation away from a bad one.

Current Mood: philosophical
Current Music: Kenny Rogers "The Gambler"

Written In the Hospital Waiting Room, 11:57 pm
Father O Father
What could I have done
To make you more happy
To be a good son?

You say that I've failed you and wasted my youth
and we've spent too many years fighting
after I left you and went away on my own
now I find you in a hospital bed dying

Once you told me to be tough, you told be to be a man
When all I wanted was some understanding
Why couldn't you just listen, why couldn't you hear
When all I wanted was a hugging?

I never wanted all the battles we fought
I never wanted to leave you and Mom
I flew off into the world and made my own mistakes
And now I wish that things could have been different

And now here we are, with you in a hospital bed
Father O Father what do we do now?
The anguish I carry, I cannot reveal
for I fear it will surely destroy you

What could I have done better, why couldn't we be friends
In a cold insensitive world
Where men must be so terrible to each other
Passing our pain to each generation?

Father O Father why did it have to be this way?
I thought that we might make some peace about this someday
But our time may be shorter than we knew
And I wish that I could have told all this to you.

Current Mood: sorrowful

One Last Cold Kiss
One Last Cold Kiss
by Gail Collins & Felix Pappalardi

Two island swans mated for life,
And his faithful heart would not consider any other wife.
For three years peaceful joy midst the rushes of the pond,
Proud and gentle was the loving of the last two island swans.

Their love was like a circle, no beginning and no end,
With his lady by his side a treasure and best friend.
And the pond was all so peaceful with the rising of the sun,
Young and free like the island breeze their life was just begun.

'Til a dread day in November when the searing cold did start,
Stalked the hunter with his bow, he put an arrow through her heart.
"Husband, come to my side, let your feathers warm my pain,
For I feel I will not spend another day with you again".

And the cold winds blow,
He was brave but he's laid low.
By her body in the isle of mist,
I saw him give her one last cold kiss,
One last cold kiss.

Of swans the people talk of only one in this days tide,
They brought him twenty ladies he would take no other bride.
They say he will not move from the place where she did fall,
Once so proud he's beaten now, he will not speak at all.

And the cold winds blow,
He was brave but he's laid low.
By her body in the isle of mist,
I saw him give her one last cold kiss,
One last cold kiss

Current Mood: words fail to describe

The Worst Day of My Life.
Friday before last, August 7, 2009, was the worst day of my life. After a long hard week at work and wanting to come home and relax, I was shocked to find out that my Mom had died and my father was in critical condition in the ICU at the hospital. I called everybody I could, and hastily packed for a flight down to San Diego the next morning, getting only about an hour of sleep.

I met up with my brother at the airport, and we landed in San Diego, trying to find a rental car on a weekend when all the rental car agencies were booked solid. After a two-hour wait at Avis, we blew towards the hospital to find Dad on artificial respirator in the ICU. The doctors gave him almost no chance of waking up, saying the damage to his brain was too great and that even if he did he would be severely impaired. My parents had given me the Power of Attorney to make medical decisions if both of them were incapacitated or dead, but I never thought I'd ever have to make terrible decisions like this.

A few days later, after we were already planning for the worst-case scenario of having to pull the plug, he started improving and actually opened his eyes, but he couldn't talk to us with the respirator. But after a day or two he contracted pneumonia, possibly from being intubated in the ICU, and he's been unconscious ever since with a raging fever and a whole host of health problems. For 11 days now we've come in every day to endure the hospital drama and try to keep him alive, but I know that he would not want me to prolong his suffering if it gets bad enough. It's just that making that call is really, really hard.

So the last week and a half I have had to spend all day talking to doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, coroners, contractors, and everyone else necessary to take care of my parents' affairs since I am the eldest son and was appointed executor of their estate. I brought in eight relatives to help out, and have been going nuts trying to coordinate flights, get them hotel rooms and meals, and drive them around to see Dad. I've pulled off some pretty big projects before, but never anything this complicated.

And with all this tragedy and drama, my 40th birthday is coming up Friday. Talk about a goddam mid-life crisis exploding all over the place. I am so not ready for this.

All I can do now for my mother is to give her the best funeral and burial that I can, and honor her memory. I still fight for my Dad, and will do everything I reasonably can to hang onto him, but he's been diagnosed with ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) with pneumonia in both lungs and they've had to crank him up to 100% oxygen last night. Folks, it ain't looking good.

A few weeks ago, my Dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday present. I wasn't sure. Maybe a hard drive, or a set of PC speakers, I wasn't sure. I told him I'd let him know later.

Yesterday, I asked him, even though he was unconscious, to hang on and get better for me, for my birthday present.

I don't want anything else. Really.

If you can, think of my Dad and of me for him. The ICU doctors are doing all they can, and I feel so helpless camping in the waiting room and watching him worsen. My Mom was always able to take care of him in all the times he ended up in the hospital, but she can't help him now. It's been the hardest thing to deal with all this terrible news and tragedy, but if I can help my Dad and get him to stay around, I will at least have gotten to keep my family together. I hang onto hope despite the odds.

Current Mood: Words can't describe

Death Be Not Proud
Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

From Holy Sonnet X, by John Donne (1572–1631)

Somebody tell me please was I right or wrong
Like a restless leaf in the autumn breeze
Once I was a tumblin weed
Like a rollin stone, cold and all alone
Living for the day my train would come
I never cared for school or any golden rules
Papa used to always say I was a useless fool
So I left my home to show them thay was wrong
And headed out on the road singing my song
Then one sunny day. the man, he looked my way
And everything that I dreamed of, it was real
Money, girls and cars; and big long cigars
And I caught the first plane home so papa would see

When I went home to show em they was wrong
All that I found was two tombstones
Somebody tell me please was I right or wrong
Oh, such a sad song
First I got lost, then I got found
But the ones that I love are in the ground
Papa I only wish you could see me now
Take a listen papa
Whoo, I learnt how to play my guitar
Gonna be a superstar

First I got lost, then I got found
The ones I love are in the ground
Wont you tell me please was I right or wrong

If theres any way you can hear what I say
Papa, I never meant to do you wrong
All the money, girls and cars. and all the words and all the cigars
Papa, I just want you to know they couldnt take your place

When I went home to show em they was wrong
All that I found was two tombstones
Somebody tell me please was I right or wrong
Oh, such a sad song
First I got lost, then I got found
But the ones that I love are in the ground
Somebody tell me please was I right or wrong

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: Was I Right or Wrong by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Kevin & Kell LOL from this last Sunday
From Kevin and Kell, one of my favorite webcomics out there..

Yeah, this is pretty much what happens with my bird feeders in the backyard, I've been battling the squirrels for the last month and a half now since I got back into the game. Love the colors on the birds in this strip!
I wonder how Bill Holbrook knew?

Goodbye Mr. Cronkite
Last Friday I was saddened to hear about the passing of Walter Cronkite, the greatest news anchor to ever run the news. He was Mr. Rogers for grown-ups, reassuring an entire nation through the darkest days of the 60's and 70's through all the upheaval, war and turmoil that we all went through.

I wasn't quite in junior high yet when he signed off the air, but I remember seeing him many evenings because back then everybody watched the news in the evening around dinnertime. Especially when there were only three channels and you could only get your news in an hour or two a day, if not from the paper. Walter Cronkite carried himself with a dignified grace and integrity that we'll never see again. His era of the news presenting the facts and honest, thoughtful opinion over sensationalism and talking-point shillery passed over a quarter century ago. This guy literally started the term "Anchor" for the news.

A plain-spoken anchor like Cronkite would never make it in today's manic, sensationalistic news business.
I mean, he wore thick black glasses and had a moustache! But back then it was less about looking good than telling things the way they were. Even if the news was terrible news, he would somehow make you feel that things were going to be OK through it all, with his "And that's the way it is" signoff.

Like Phog Allen in his day, Cronkite was pushed out the door by CBS's mandatory retirement at 65-- and then came the era of Captain Hairdo network news anchors with shiny teeth and little substance. Cronkite stepped down as the last of the old greats, and before long the news became about fast sound bites, know-it-all pretty talking heads, and, with the removal of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, invective-bloated pundits and screaming newscasts on FOX News. It must have been hard for him to watch all this happen, not to mention the decline and fall of journalism as a profession and an industry.

So here's to you, Mr. Cronkite, I hope you're landing some awesome interviews with history's greats out there in the hereafter. The news media could learn a lot from your example, if they would just listen.

Happy Birthday Nugget
Happy Birthday Nugget, wherever you are. It's been 11 years now since I had to say goodbye, and I've missed you and Velvet every day. You were both such wonderful pups and I had no idea how lucky I was to have you both as long as I did.

Oh very young what will you leave us this time
There'll never be a better chance to change your mind
And if you want this world to see a better day
Will you carry the words of love with you
Will you ride the great white bird into heaven
And though you want to last forever
You know you never will
You know you never will
And the goodbye makes the journey harder still

Oh very young what will you leave us this time
You're only dancing on this earth for a short while
Oh very young what will you leave us this time.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Cat Stevens, "Oh Very Young"

So this is where we ended up... in the Age of Mean.
When I first got online over a quarter of a century ago, BBS's were in their infancy, and the rules for online discourse were only starting to get figured out. There were of course disagrements and "flamewars" (although the word didn't exist yet) but in general, if you were actually online talking to someone at all, you had to be reasonably intelligent to use a computer and get online (with some rare but notable exceptions). Especially in the days when you had to find out the numbers to the BBS (and they weren't in the phone book) hand-type the AT commands to call it.

Then, of course, the online world exploded, first with the June 1983 release of WarGames came out and every nine-year old begged their parents for a modem so they could hack into NORAD. The online world was never the same. Same thing for the AOLers flooding the online world the minute they were unleashed upon UseNET during Eternal September a decade later. The signal-to-noise ratio of the entire UseNet went to hell after that, I can't remember the last time I even tried to read anything in it. It was a sad loss of a valuable online resource to pollution by stupidity.

Watch Internet Commenter Business Meeting on CollegeHumor

And so now, here we are. While the video above is hilarious, it underscores the sad truth that the online world has become a much more vicious and ignorant place. If it's not enough to worry about porn spammers and phishers these days that might steal your identity, now we have to deal with the pollution spewed forth from nasty and ignorant miscreants that have somehow learned to type, although apparently not spell. (And this in an age of spell checkers)

( And you might ask yourself... HOW did I get here!?!? )

The change must come from all of us. While I'm not all that hopeful that anything will get better in the near term, eventually having a nation not torn apart by war and greed will go a long way. I also think education is a huge part of the battle. As a kid in grade school, you end up having to take years of classes on how to write essays and develop critical thinking, but the schools never really teach how to communicate or interact with people online. It has to start in the classroom, and it has to start with the kids. And it has to start with all of us.

Current Mood: pessimistic

LOL for today
Got a LOL from another Rhymes with Orange strip in the funnies in today's newspaper:

Aside from the open-face suit (necessary for the visual gag), I know people just like this!

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Winged Migration Soundtrack

Thoughts of Graduation and Life's Passages
Here we are again, at Commencement time, as my thoughts hearken back to those that walk down The Hill in Lawrence this coming Sunday, as thousands of fellow Jayhawks make the painful transition from student to unemployed, as I did eighteen years ago.

The Pomp and Circumstance, the feeling of getting to walk down that hill with everyone cheering for you as you climb up into Memorial Stadium with your cap and gown and get to walk up on the stage on the football field, was a life experience. I had already known for a long time I was a Jayhawk forever, but that part sealed the deal.

But graduation didn't solve the problem. Just because you had a degree, even a tech degree, didn't mean there were any jobs, as we all struggled to find work in a terrible Bush recession and a recent war. Despite my CS degree, I had to file papers and do data entry in temp jobs just to get by-- and dear friends of mine eked out meager existences working at such wonderful places like Corporate Burger Death and Wal-Mart. But still we hung on, and did our best to stick together. We were the guys that went to all the Jayhawk basketball (and even football) games together, drank at the Free State brewery together, or stayed up all night building Linux servers together. I miss those guys.

Back when I hung around Lawrence, I would go to the graduations of my friends after I graduated, and then the graduations of my friends' younger siblings. Then it got to the point where I didn't know anyone that was still a student any more, and now I try not to think about how the current graduates were in preschool when I graduated!

We all graduated thinking that the courses we learned in college were going to prepare us for real life, but they were scant preparation for much of the real-world rough and tumble of careers, jobs, and life kicking you in the ass. So just for all the recent college graduates out there, here's my Top 12 list of classes that they SHOULD have taught us when we were in college, but didn't.

12. M&A 212 - So your company just got acquired -- what happens next and how to get out before then
11. Office politics 101 - How to talk the talk and play the game in the working world
10. This is not my beautiful life! How to cope with being a working stiff when your friends are still having fun being students
9 . Theater and Film 212 - Intro to the Interview Song and Dance!
8 . Finance 313 - Figuring out how the hell you're supposed to buy a house on your salary
7 . Stunt Driving 212 - How to deal with a nasty commute and jobs in dangerous neighborhoods
6 . Psych 540 - So Your Boss is a Psycho - Coping and psychological mitigation strategies to help you bail before you lose your fricken' mind
5 . Business 635 - How to tell when your workplace is going to hell in a bucket, and when to get out before it implodes
4 . Psych 804 - Introduction to Relationships II - How to not end up sleeping on the couch
3 . So you've been laid off-- How to pack up your crap, get your final paperwork, and reinvent yourself for the next gig so you can keep eating
2 . Directed readings 899 - Coping strategies on How to deal with your mid-life crisis!
1 . Health 405 - Preventing the "post-graduation 20", when you can finally afford food and put on 20+ lbs in your first year out of school!

Congrats to everyone graduating this next month or so, whatever school it may be!

Awwww yeah....
There's something to be said for working at a big company-- after years of working at startups, for the first time in years I actually have a faster net connection at work than I do at home. I did a double-take yesterday when I pulled down the Ubuntu install CD at work in less than a minute. So I ran speedtest.net, and while I have grayed out the locations for privacy, the numbers are totally unaltered. Man, I gotta be sitting on an OC-3 or something.

Some 19 years ago, when I still a CS major at KU, the campus went from one 56k line to a full T1. I thought we'd all died and gone to heaven. 1.5 MEGABITS! OMG! Telnet, FTP and Gopher were blazingly fast now!
Years before, my dad went to a party the KU Computer Center was having because they had just gotten 300 baud modems. (So MUCH faster than the 110 baud they were using before!)

And yes, kids, a modem was something you had to use back in the olden times to get it online. Look it up on Wikipedia.

Cinco de Mayo (or Cindo de Drinko?)
Hey, anyone up for getting margaritas tonight at Cinco de Mayo? I have a reservation at a tequilaeria in the South Bay, and room for a few more seats on the reservation. ;)

Superheroes of Cincinatti on CNN
I just had to LOL seeing this on CNN this afternoon...

Superheroes' take to streets

Embedded video from CNN Video

I love the idea, but guys, please spend more time working on the costumes!
And no, Under Armour tops and neon-panelled diveskins are not going to strike fear and awe into the hearts of criminals. Here, I'll give you my spandex tailor's contact info, he could do wonders for you guys!

Also work on a better superhero voice-- it's not just the same speaking voice when you're ordering a coffee at Starbucks! Batman makes his all gravelly and rough, and a lot of superheroes develop their their deepest bassoprofundo or even make a golden-throat Mighty Mouse-style voice. Bonus points if you have a really cool-looking hero-mobile to drive around in, even if it isn't powered by a jet engine.

Too bad we don't have a "Sky High" school of superheroes in RL so that aspiring young heroes can learn these things.

And lay off the mace, willya? Superheroes don't use pepper spray!

Current Mood: amused

Yay Furry Superheroes!

While looking up someone's fursuit pic in preparation for the upcoming Mountain View Parade, I stumbled across a banner ad on FA for a comic book series called "Furry Guardians" by CyberKlaw that came out in 2007. What an awesome series! I've been looking for something like this for years, and quickly ordered a bunch of the comics. It's been aeons since I've bought any new comics, even superhero comics (furry or otherwise).. Just too cool!
(and SuperFur is already my favorite of the bunch... but that's kinda obvious)

In other news, the Mountain View Spring Parade is coming up this coming Saturday! I've been preparing for it for the last week or so, and hopefully we'll have an awesome turnout. The theme for this year's parade is "Save the Day...Mountain View's Superheroes"! We may very well have an appearance of a character that hasn't shown up at a Critters gig in literally years. ;) Will also be interesting to see how many other characters don cape, tights, and mask (or at least the cape) to join in the theme!

Hopefully we'll get some awesome pictures... I hope to have almost as much fun as the superhero-themed Megaplex 2008 that I went to last year! (Still need to write about that too)

Current Music: Stirring superhero theme

Being a flaming home-owner is fricken' expensive
...especially when you buy at the peak (or near it) like I did in May 2008.

Property Tax + House Payment + Insurance Claim Deductible + Home Insurance Policy = $9400 !

All due in the next month. And I can't find the Vaseline anywhere. Oy!
And this weekend I get to figure out my income taxes on top of that... which are much more complicated these days, now that I've bought a house. Guess we're going to have to wait on blinging out the Hawk-Mobile.

I'm in the mood for a stiff drink-- anyone up for unspecified drinking?

Current Mood: frazzled

Old man rant -- Why nobody can remember anything any more
Many aeons ago, a third of a century ago in fact, when I was young, I knew my home phone number. This was in a time where there was one phone in the entire house, and maybe one in the master bedroom. (and you could have any color phone you wanted, so long as it was black or white). I can still remember it now, 888-2369, even though we moved out of that particular house 30 years ago.

This morning I was going to call a family member from my office phone, and realized that I had no idea what their number was any more-- I had to go to the HawkMobile and get my cell phone, where the number was stored. It was even worse when I switched phones last year, since there was no nice way to transfer the numbers. When I ask people for their own number, often times they don't even know what it is. Everybody moves around so much that the number I had for them last year isn't any good anyway, and if I actually take the trouble to remember it, it's out of date. And it was even worse before cellular phones carriers finally added number portability when you changed carriers.

( Why, back in MY day.... )

To be fair, the world is a much more complex place now than it was back when I was young. If you wanted to take out something from starting up every time you booted your computer back then, you took it out of your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS. Now you have to regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the Windows registry to do the same thing. I suspect most people have no idea on how to do that, much the less being scared of even running regedit. Everybody has several phone numbers now, and for better or worse, the barrier to entry to get online has been lowered dramatically (like it or not).

But all someone like Dr. Evil has to do to really screw all of us up is mess up a few root DNS servers, the GPS constellation and take out a few search engines, and nobody will be able to go anywhere, do anything, or call anyone. I wonder what archaeologists in the future will make of our time in history, if there's much left to look at.

Current Mood: Old

Stop. Tourney Time!
Here we are, the moment that we wait all year for. Watching the Kansas Jayhawks from afar since the beginning of the season back in November develop from a young team of mostly underclassmen and freshmen, to get through the nonconference and then conference schedules, and now the one thing that means everything... The Big Dance.

The entire season comes together at the end, where you find out where your seeding will get you in the tournament and where you end up. The Jayhawks did reasonably well getting a 3rd seed in the Midwest bracket, especially considering that disappointing loss to Baylor in the Big 12 Tournament. Last year the Jayhawks won it all, something I waited twenty years for. As expected, every starter left for the NBA or elsewhere. This year, with such a young team, I'm just happy they made it to the Sweet 16.

I was going to write about this last week before the tournament started, but I've been kept busy with all kinds of things going on at home, and I had to wait out the first-round curse (even though KU didn't end up playing a school starting with "B")

Most people (especially out here on the West Coast) think I'm totally nuts for doggedly following my Jayhawks' journey through the tournament, but that's why I bought a satellite dish. ;) It's not easy, with the time difference and wrangling my schedule around the games, but I still see most of games in a season, even though it's been over a decade since I left.

This is the time of year that I really miss being back in Lawrence, to plug in just for a moment to that electrified atmosphere where KU Basketball means everything. The games are simulcast over every grocery store, every hardware store, every restaurant, every bar and you can practically hear the cheers off in the distance when the game is on. Out here no one really watches basketball because most of the teams are one-and-dones or end up in the Nobody's Interested Tournament (NIT). And don't even get me started about the pro team(s) out here.

There's nothing like that kind of atmosphere here, so I sit in the Hawk-Cave and cheer for my 'Hawks from thousands of miles away. Most people out here think I'm utterly nuts for that. (Among other reasons).

The first two rounds of the Tourney have gone really well so far, although the North Dakota State game was pretty scary-- NDSU's Ben Woodside just could not miss with the three. Dayton was a hard-fought game on Sunday, but lots more fun to watch.

And Sherron Collins and Aldrich have totally carried the entire team through the tournament, getting most of the points for the whole team on their own. 6'11" Aldrich was a monster in the paint on Sunday, getting a triple-double and pretty much preventing Dayton from getting any shots launched.

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Sherron Collins	Cole Aldrich

Next up is the payback game against Michigan State, a rematch of the the disastrous Jan. 10 game where the Jayhawks got walloped in East Lansing, and I had a triple suck day at home, with bad news with the sewage backup and FC. I'm looking forward to the Jayhawks getting to show how far they've progressed since that game, and hopefully it will be a good game.

So on Friday night at 6:30pm, I'll be firing up the neon sign and watching the game. Who knows, maybe I'll dig up a few of us old alumni and old college drinking buddies, we only get to see each other during Tourney Time.

Oh yes, and in other news, the Kansas Jayhawk has made the Top Ten Mascots of the 2009 NCAA Tournament on petside.com. And one of only six left still in the tournament.

Also, because I had all kinds of things going on getitng ready for FC, I didn't get the chance to congratulate Big Jay, Baby Jay, and the KU Spirit and Cheerleading Squads for finishing in the Top Ten in the big national Collegiate Mascot Competition in Orlando, FL back on January 29!
Embedded video below (let's see if this works).

Current Mood: ready

Rockin' in tights
Got a LOL from the funnies in the newspaper today:

I never thought of Batman as an acoustic guitar player though. Maybe a sax or a bassist.
I wonder when he "went unplugged" (like when Bob Dylan "Went electric" in 1965).

Current Music: Na na na na na na na na... Batman!