Loose Change: Shayne Waxes Philosophical

[I sent this note to all my M Com 320 students as we wrapped up this past semester.]

I wish on the last day of class for our final we could just eat Daylight Donuts and chat. But the university as well as life wants a bit of measurement, so we conform. And were I to take time on the day of the final to give a last lecture or some kind of wrap up, I suspect you would be reviewing what HATS stands for, and not really listen to me.

I’ll share those donut thoughts here as a wrap-up lecture or chat.

First, thanks for your contribution to making our class what it was. I always hope to create a good learning environment where we can teach each other. I’ve been taught well.

Some of you are jumping out into the work force about now. Your resumes are no longer just for practice. So what will you find out there?

The world has hit the Restart button financially. Rebooting usually fixes nagging problems, but often with a loss in the process. Sure it can seem like a scary time to be graduating and looking for a job. If you haven’t heard the news: its bad out there; just ask the person standing next to you if they know anyone who has lost a job recently.

I think it’s actually a good time to enter the work force. Am I just ignorant? That could be debated. But I am an eternal optimist. Why not be? I don’t recall any bestseller titled The Power of Negative Thinking.

You enter the work force with a sense of realism that others haven’t had. Others before you left college with a sense of entitlement, a sense that the world owed them something. They entered a market where some business processes and practices were sloppy because they could afford to be. Mediocrity could still get a job with an average salary.

Now, mediocrity will be searching longer while excellence will still get a job as it always has. It may take longer than before, will require more creativity, and perhaps even more patience. But there is always work for those who are willing to pay the price and think outside the rectangle.

Our economy will correct itself. People are still curious and creative and will figure out how to make it work. And yes, that might take a little while, but what is a little while compare with the rest of your life?

Greed and making money from nothing torched a fire that is burning not just the cheatgrass but a few nice homes as well. But after the fiery flames blow through and the winds die down, there will be growth. You will be positioned to take advantage of that growth—if you keep your wits about you.

As you face the future, I draw particular attention to the talk just given in the LDS General Conference by Robert D. Hales. http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1032-2,00.html

I know you are not all LDS, however the principles he addresses transcend specific religious affiliation. Among other things he said:

These two lessons are the essence of provident living. When faced with the choice to buy, consume, or engage in worldly things and activities, we all need to learn to say to one another, “We can’t afford it, even though we want it!” or “We can afford it, but we don’t need it—and we really don’t even want it!”

Imagine if everyone borrowing money for a home that was beyond their means had followed this counsel.

Follow the advice of all those who spoke and will continue to speak at these General Conferences. Don’t ever feel you are an exception to what is being taught there.

Don’t let your career prohibit you from serving in your church or from flying kites with your kids. There is just a short window where your kids will want your attention, and then you will spend the rest of your life trying to get theirs.

So I wish you the best. You are excellent! You have a contribution to make to this world. Do it! Some of that may be with your career. Do your best to stay balanced. Don’t let your career pursuits supersede your family success. Your career gets buried with your bones. Your family lives with you forever. Have fun! Laugh your head off. Eat chocolate.

One more thing. The other night I was at dinner for the Marriott School. I saw two of my former teachers-both retired, but still alive! I hadn’t seen them for 25 years. One was my M Com 320 teacher and one was my Organizational Behavior 321 teacher. I said hello to both of them and they were kind and asked what I was up to, but clearly didn’t remember me. I wasn’t that surprised because they’ve had hundreds of students in 25 years and I was eminently forgettable as a student—especially as an undergraduate.

But it did get me thinking. I can’t imagine not remembering you good people, but it may happen. Perhaps sooner than later. So if sometime we bumped into each other, and I call you Jaraslov when your name is really Margo, or Brooke when your name is really Jordan, please understand that although a mind is a terrible thing to waste—mine will be wasted.

And stay in touch. I have your blogs and I can be found here, on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and who knows what.

All the best to you!

With great respect,

Shayne

The Web is a web

Call me persnickety. In trying to figure out the right way to spell "Web" and "web" and "Web site," and whether to capitalize "internet" I've come across this little ditty from the Internet. It is odd that these spellings would garner so much attention from me because I can't spell “receive” or any of the i-before-e words (as soon as I learned there were exceptions like "neighbor" and "whey" I decided not to learn it.) Yes I know whey is speled wrong.

In truth, I should focus on the i-before-e words or how to spell "license" or "misspell" because they aren't going to change anytime soon. How we spell Web site, probably will.

So here is what Bob Wyman said.

‘Internet’ vs. ‘internet’ and ‘Web’ vs. ‘web’: Wisdom from Net guru Bob Wyman based on IETF usage

By Bob Wyman

Moderator: You should cap “Internet” and “Web,” at least in a “the” context. Below, excerpted with permission from a post to the online-news list, is wisdom from Bob Wyman, a Google tech staffer and long-time Net expert. - D.R.

"In the technical community that created and named the Internet, the convention is to capitalize when one is writing about the specific “internet” that we call the Internet and not to capitalize when referring to generic internets. In this case, the technical community is essentially acting as their own lexicographers and using the capitalization to add disambiguating information to the text. Think of it as a case of case-sensitive encoding.

Those who doubt the value of this distinction need only scan any of the thousands of documents on the site of the Internet Engineering Task Force. The IETF is responsible for the internet standards that make the Internet work. They should know how to spell the name of what they build.

If you “never capitalize internet and web,” you are simply indicating that you don’t understand the technical distinction between the Internet and an internet. Also, you don’t understand the difference between the Web and a web. (For instance, Tim Berners-Lee clearly wrote the first Web browser. However, I may have written the first, or at least one of the first, web browsers.) The difference in capitalization is exceptionally significant.

The Internet is an internet.

The Web is a web."

Source:
http://www.teleread.org/2008/03/27/internet-vs-internet-and-web-vs-web-wisdom-from-bob-wyman-based-on-ietf-usage/

When Grandma Goes To Court

Moral of the Story

[Don't know the author; got this via email.]

A Teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment: Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.

The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories. There were all the regular type stuff, spilled milk and pennies saved.

But then teacher realized, much to her dismay, that only Ernie was left. 'Ernie, do you have a story to share?'

'Yes ma'am. My daddy told a story about my Aunt Karen. She was a pilot in Desert Storm and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol and a survival knife. She drank the whiskey on the way down so the bottle wouldn't break and then her parachute landed right in the middle of twenty enemy troops. She shot fifteen of them with the gun until she ran out of bullets, killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke, and then she killed the last enemy with her bare hands.'

'Good Heavens' said the horrified teacher. 'What kind of moral did your daddy tell you from this horrible story?'

'Stay the hell away from Aunt Karen when she's drinking.'

New Line on the Horizon

U2
New Line on the Horizon

Worth the wait!

Now to see them again in concert!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Yes Thanksgiving, that little sliver of a holiday we used to celebrate in the fall. It once symbolized the harvest season, now it’s Black Friday eve. How odd that the Halloween pumpkins are still freshly smashed, and the elevators and doctor’s offices are cranking up the Christmas music. Quick--unbox the Christmas tree and spray the pine scent around. St. Visa will soon be here with ruby red-nose Rudolph.

But wait. What about Thanksgiving? What about over the river and through the woods? What about eating yourself sleepy at Grandma’s house and hiding Grandpa’s teeth? If Thanksgiving were in a favorite holiday pageant, and asked how it stacks up to Christmas What would it say?

Perhaps that Thanksgiving is less produced. At least less produced than Christmas or Independence Day, for example. Any holiday that keeps you out of the Mall or Wal-Mart is indeed a holiday.

While retailers lustfully wait for the day after Thanksgiving to absorb our credit and deposit our dollars, maybe we could put them off for a bit. (The notable exceptions, of course, are Best Buy and Home Depot, in which we need to share our coin during all the seasons.)

How about not just a day of Thanksgiving, a day off from Frosty and the Workshop Elves, but a season of Thanksgiving that begins the day after Halloween when we are thankful we are less compelled to eat everything in the pillowcase, and extend that until Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving day.

How do you beat a holiday dedicated to giving thanks? No one ever got arrested for being too thankful. It doesn’t cost anything and you don’t have to wait until it goes on sale. All it takes is a little pause. Look up at the night sparklers, take a walk like it was the first time with your eyes open, watch a baby smile, feed a duck (preferably to a falcon :) ) play hopscotch, rake a neighbors leaves, buy a stranger a Coke, remember well a friend before their funeral, thank God you don’t have a headache.

Thanksgiving like many holidays began with a feast, a little meal shared between neighbors signifying their gratitude for not killing each other. Still not a bad idea. And it can be done simply without committees and crowd control or frazzled worriers sure that someone will be misplaced from their name tagged plate.

One of my best Thanksgiving memories was set in New England. We lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, just a state away from the first harvest feast between pilgrims and their native neighbors. My sister and her husband came from Utah to visit and a second sister living in nearby New York also joined us. My parents were in South Africa, while the rest of our families were spread out in the West. The meal was a simple meal, with the rich patchwork textures of Connecticut as a backdrop.

John Greenleaf Whittier penned a Thanksgiving verse and symbolized the New England gathering of "pilgrim and guest" by calling his poem, The Pumpkin.

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

As my own past is called up, rich as pumpkin pie, the pie is ever pumpkin with hand whipped cream heaped with extra sugar when Mom turned her head. Along with family in easy chatter, what also calls the past is the autumn leaf. Especially the New England treelets. I see piles and shades of gold and red, huge Crayola snow flakes (the big box kind with the built-in sharper) gathering on lawns and stony fences and meandering down wandering roads.

And as a car whisks down the path, the leaves like color fairies are set in orbit and spin to new destinies. And I think of myself, whisking down a path toward the Thanksgiving day and meal. Whether simple or complex I will soak in the kitchen smells, thank the floured aprons, the pleasant table display, the chairs filled with loved ones.

I hope my thanks includes my help before, after or during, but know I will be trusted mostly during the after phase. I washed dishes professionally once, so will I draw on those skills. And then I will look for a soft chair, a good book and someone to catch up with. In all, I give thanks, and hopefully will make a season of it.

© Shayne Clarke 2008

Halloween Dance

At what turned out to be the second-to-last house for trick or treating, I noticed that my son Danaan, age six at the time, was doing a light dance as he waited for the candy to be disbursed. Seeing the choreography was similar to steps he does in the middle of the night while trying to remember which room contains a toilet, I yelled at him to dance straight to the car. I knew time was short. And while I calculated the chance of making it home before his bladder exploded, he turned and walked straight through the valley of the shadow of tooth decay to the next door.

And yes this house proved to be his last chance for free candy. By now the dance at the door rivaled the rhythm of an early morning aerobics class. He could barely hold his bag open. He had the focus of a cat waiting for the mouse to peek out. The focus had been the anticipated candy--was it a real Snickers or the “fun” size? (And don’t we all agree that a real fun size would be a foot long?) But the focus changed. Now it was like the vulture eating in the middle of the road, who thinks to himself, “Can I take one more bite before the on-coming truck hits me?”

Or sure he could have said, “Excuse me Ma’am, thanks again for the Smarties, but I was wondering if I could use your bathroom before I pee my pants?” But of course, this doesn’t happen. And I would have bet a Big Hunk, on that one. I was six once. I peed my pants right there in the lunch room because I was afraid to ask someone where the little boy’s room was. And then I had to sit there all during lunch hoping it would dry before I had to go back to class. It didn’t.

I knew Danaan wouldn’t ask. I knew it really was the last door as he scampered down the steps and raced to the car. I also knew we were in trouble as his steps moved quickly from the high-energy, high-stepping stride of a bathroom seeker, to the slow, wide-walking waltz of a shower seeker. His face morphed from a candy thrill-seeker to the Pillsbury doughboy who just met a rolling pin.

The appropriate response to his state was unclear. There is just something funny about the walk of a kid who has just peed his pants, and as much I as wanted to bust out laughing, I had to restrain. He wasn’t sure how to respond either. This was the first time his bladder almost exploded on Candy Night.

His face was a menu of embarrassed laughter and suppressed tears. When he got to the car, I had to make a mature decision. Where do you seat a soiled kid? Do I have him waddle along the side of the car the remaining blocks home? Do I have him ride on the hood? Putting him in the trunk on Halloween was probably not a good idea. Do I go home and get the truck? Call a tow truck? And then I remember he has enough candy in his bag to keep us most saturated in calories until next October. “Hop in bud!” I say warmly. “Let me hold your bag for you.”