SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Reading this post may lower your opinion of me.
If you know me, but don't know that I have a juvenile sense of humor, well, then you probably don't know me all that well. My wife likes to say that when it comes to humor, I'm a 12-year old trapped in a man's body.
So, with that to recommend me, here are a few jokes I've made up recently.
1. Here's one you'll never find in Reader's Digest's "Life in These United States":
I knew things were going to be a little crazy when the new test lead stated that he couldn't bring both his testes to the meeting.
"Testes?" I asked with some hesitation.
"Yeah, testes -- you know, the guys who test stuff." He said.
Riiight, those testes. At least now I knew he had two.
2. And now one that you might:
Recently I was out walking my pet weasel, as I do every night. We'd just stopped by our favorite mulberry bush when my neighbor's pet monkey burst through the window. "All around the mulberry bush ..."
3. Now for some vocabulary:
dotcommunist: (noun) A true believer in technology as the solution to every problem.
Sample sentence: "I tried to convince my boss that the problem was with our policies and procedures, but he's a hard-line dotcommunist; now we've got PeopleSoft."
mommunist: (noun) Children who prefer their mother to all other adults including their father.
Sample sentence: "When I walked into the kitchen, the mommunists were clinging to my wife's legs like marxists to a defunct ideology."
It's true -- I think communists are funny. Those wacky Reds! They actually think everyone should just want to share stuff without getting anything for it -- Wait, I think those are parents; communists just want everyone to share the means of production. Oh, well. Whatever. They're both crazy ideas that don't work.
Ba-dump-bump! I'll be here all night.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Dan, I hardly knew ye
I've copied below the body of an email exchange I had recently with one of the guys where I work.
Dan,
Man, it's hard to believe you are leaving! You're one of the last of the elder statesmen of Vecna engineering. Well, I can't claim that we were close, but I have appreciated the technical expertise and experience you've shared and the guidance you've given to the projects I've managed. Thanks.
Good luck in your new endeavors.
Mike
Mike,
Thanks! i think that's the first time i have been called an "elder statesman". kind of frightening - but i'll take it as a good thing :-) . it was a pleasure working with you also on the few occasions we did, and good luck in the future.
-dan
So why does this exchange mean anything to me? At first brush, it's just a pleasantly mundane email exchange between two coworkers, one who's staying and one who's moving on.
Now for some back story.
When I first met Dan, I didn't really know what to make of him. I was just another new guy while he was clearly part of the engineering "in" crowd. I got the impression that he had important things to do and didn't really have the time to talk to someone new and relatively green like myself. As time went on, I never really made any inroads into the engineering "in" crowd, but luckily for me, I had other friends in the company that I knew prior to joining the company, so I managed to get along in spite of that handicap.
The thing is, in the early days when I joined Vecna, it wasn't the kind of place where a loner or introvert was likely to succeed. Getting into the "in" crowd wasn't just something to make the work day brighter, it was necessary to keep your job. Your daily work life was ruled by three big realities:
But that changed when I joined Vecna.
You see, at Vecna, at the time that I joined the company, everyone had to shoulder the responsibility of ensuring Vecna's continued profitability by making their MBR every week. If you missed your MBR too many weeks in a row, you could expect to have an uncomfortable talk with the company president.
And how were you to meet your MBR?
Well, at the time I joined the company, you did it by participating actively in Vecna's FMS. You see, in the FMS, all employees are peers and free agents who make contracts with each other for work that they need completed. So how do you get work (so that you'll have some that needs to be completed)? You market your skills and experience to someone who has work that needs to be done. Assuming that they accept your offer, you've got work, and, if they don't, well, every hour that you spend hunting for work is non-billable and counts against you meeting your MBR. Oh, yeah, and the FMS -- it's completely unregulated, pure laissez faire economics.
So I think you get the picture:
So why am I telling you all of this when this post is supposed to be about me and Dan, a coworker who's now leaving the company and with whom I was never really all that close?
Here's why:
About that time (three or four weeks into the job), something happened that ensured I would never be all that close with Dan.
During my first job, my brother, who is just a year younger than I am and who matters a great deal to me, gave me a toy monkey. Nothing big, just a monkey with a banana on a string attached to the monkey's belly. It's made of plastic and is about two inches tall and an inch in diameter, and if you hang its banana over the edge of the desk, it will walk to the edge off the desk and fall off. Not all that valuable. Except to me.
Every job I've gone to since, I've taken that monkey with me. I've even given him a name - Mao. For a while, a coworker and I in my first job had a running joke about Mao. "Bow to the Moa!" We'd say to each other whenever anyone would call us for help and then we'd chuckle. We even took pictures of Moa, blew them up, and made a poster.
So you see, Mao was a big deal to me.
When I joined Vecna, they'd just recently moved to a new building and set up a cube farm on the second floor. Dan and I were assigned cubes in the same aisle directly across from each other, an arrangement that would seem insignificant, except for this fact: his desk was the closest desk to my own that wasn't blocked by a partition.
Why does that matter?
One morning, I came into work to find Mao broken in pieces on Dan's desk.
Well, you can imagine for yourself how I felt about that. Here he was, an accepted, even venerated, member of the "in" crowd who couldn't even be bothered to talk to me on most days, who had just assumed he could play with my monkey and now it was broken. AND HE HADN'T EVEN BOTHERED TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE!
I was fuming. All morning long, I thought about it. At this point, I was very familiar with my precarious position in the organization. But I couldn't let it go. HE HAD BROKEN MOA! Finally I dashed off an email telling him to leave the things on my desk alone and sent it before I could talk myself out of it.
Then I never heard a thing from him about it.
Now here's the trick of it all: One morning, a few months after I'd finally gotten established, I was watching the President's children playing in the office. It wasn't uncommon for them to be there because he is the President and his wife is the CEO, so the company and its offices are just an extension of their family home (something that was literally true when the company was first founded). Anyhow, as I watched one of them grab something from someone's desk, I suddenly realized I'd been totally wrong about Dan. He hadn't touched my monkey at all. I felt a great sense of foolishness mixed with shame.
But there was nothing I could do about it.
He had never called me on my accusations and he still hardly spoke to me, except when absolutely necessary. Suddenly, I could understand why. No doubt, I'd come across like some kind of paranoid lunatic, someone best to be avoided as much as possible.
And so much time had passed. I didn't really know how to broach the subject, and, besides, maybe he'd already forgotten the whole incident. I didn't really know. In any case, it seemed best just to let it be water under the bridge.
Except, of course, that you can't actually do that.
Every interaction that I had with him from that time forward was always colored by the fact that I'd once accused him of something he hadn't done and had never apologized for it. Eventually, as you can tell from the email exchange, we came to have a functional working relationship, but we never became friends or even just friendly coworkers.
So, you see, in a way, my email to him is an attempt to say "I'm sorry" and to acknowledge that I know he is a better person than the kind of person I accused him of being. I hope he saw it in there somewhere, hiding inside the mundane well-wishes of one employee who is staying on to another employee who has decided to go.
Good luck to you, Dan. I wish you well in your new endeavors.
All,
After close to 6 years at Vecna I have decided to move on. It has been a great time, and I feel privileged to have been able to get to know and work with many wonderful people. During this time Vecna has experienced great growth and success, and I am sure will see that success continue in the future.
My last day will be Thursday, Sep 6.
I will remain in the DC area and so hope to see many of you around, and wish everyone the best.
- Dan
Dan,
Man, it's hard to believe you are leaving! You're one of the last of the elder statesmen of Vecna engineering. Well, I can't claim that we were close, but I have appreciated the technical expertise and experience you've shared and the guidance you've given to the projects I've managed. Thanks.
Good luck in your new endeavors.
Mike
Mike,
Thanks! i think that's the first time i have been called an "elder statesman". kind of frightening - but i'll take it as a good thing :-) . it was a pleasure working with you also on the few occasions we did, and good luck in the future.
-dan
So why does this exchange mean anything to me? At first brush, it's just a pleasantly mundane email exchange between two coworkers, one who's staying and one who's moving on.
Now for some back story.
When I first met Dan, I didn't really know what to make of him. I was just another new guy while he was clearly part of the engineering "in" crowd. I got the impression that he had important things to do and didn't really have the time to talk to someone new and relatively green like myself. As time went on, I never really made any inroads into the engineering "in" crowd, but luckily for me, I had other friends in the company that I knew prior to joining the company, so I managed to get along in spite of that handicap.
The thing is, in the early days when I joined Vecna, it wasn't the kind of place where a loner or introvert was likely to succeed. Getting into the "in" crowd wasn't just something to make the work day brighter, it was necessary to keep your job. Your daily work life was ruled by three big realities:
- The "Free Market System" (FMS),
- Your "Minimum Billable Requirement" (MBR), and
- The fact that Engineering was king.
But that changed when I joined Vecna.
You see, at Vecna, at the time that I joined the company, everyone had to shoulder the responsibility of ensuring Vecna's continued profitability by making their MBR every week. If you missed your MBR too many weeks in a row, you could expect to have an uncomfortable talk with the company president.
And how were you to meet your MBR?
Well, at the time I joined the company, you did it by participating actively in Vecna's FMS. You see, in the FMS, all employees are peers and free agents who make contracts with each other for work that they need completed. So how do you get work (so that you'll have some that needs to be completed)? You market your skills and experience to someone who has work that needs to be done. Assuming that they accept your offer, you've got work, and, if they don't, well, every hour that you spend hunting for work is non-billable and counts against you meeting your MBR. Oh, yeah, and the FMS -- it's completely unregulated, pure laissez faire economics.
So I think you get the picture:
- If you don't meet your MBR, you're out of a job.
- To meet your MBR, you've got be hustling every day in the FMS, competing against people who have already established their presence in the market place and can leverage their personal relationships.
- The engineering "in" crowd rules the FMS.
So why am I telling you all of this when this post is supposed to be about me and Dan, a coworker who's now leaving the company and with whom I was never really all that close?
Here's why:
About that time (three or four weeks into the job), something happened that ensured I would never be all that close with Dan.
During my first job, my brother, who is just a year younger than I am and who matters a great deal to me, gave me a toy monkey. Nothing big, just a monkey with a banana on a string attached to the monkey's belly. It's made of plastic and is about two inches tall and an inch in diameter, and if you hang its banana over the edge of the desk, it will walk to the edge off the desk and fall off. Not all that valuable. Except to me.
Every job I've gone to since, I've taken that monkey with me. I've even given him a name - Mao. For a while, a coworker and I in my first job had a running joke about Mao. "Bow to the Moa!" We'd say to each other whenever anyone would call us for help and then we'd chuckle. We even took pictures of Moa, blew them up, and made a poster.
So you see, Mao was a big deal to me.
When I joined Vecna, they'd just recently moved to a new building and set up a cube farm on the second floor. Dan and I were assigned cubes in the same aisle directly across from each other, an arrangement that would seem insignificant, except for this fact: his desk was the closest desk to my own that wasn't blocked by a partition.
Why does that matter?
One morning, I came into work to find Mao broken in pieces on Dan's desk.
Well, you can imagine for yourself how I felt about that. Here he was, an accepted, even venerated, member of the "in" crowd who couldn't even be bothered to talk to me on most days, who had just assumed he could play with my monkey and now it was broken. AND HE HADN'T EVEN BOTHERED TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE!
I was fuming. All morning long, I thought about it. At this point, I was very familiar with my precarious position in the organization. But I couldn't let it go. HE HAD BROKEN MOA! Finally I dashed off an email telling him to leave the things on my desk alone and sent it before I could talk myself out of it.
Then I never heard a thing from him about it.
Now here's the trick of it all: One morning, a few months after I'd finally gotten established, I was watching the President's children playing in the office. It wasn't uncommon for them to be there because he is the President and his wife is the CEO, so the company and its offices are just an extension of their family home (something that was literally true when the company was first founded). Anyhow, as I watched one of them grab something from someone's desk, I suddenly realized I'd been totally wrong about Dan. He hadn't touched my monkey at all. I felt a great sense of foolishness mixed with shame.
But there was nothing I could do about it.
He had never called me on my accusations and he still hardly spoke to me, except when absolutely necessary. Suddenly, I could understand why. No doubt, I'd come across like some kind of paranoid lunatic, someone best to be avoided as much as possible.
And so much time had passed. I didn't really know how to broach the subject, and, besides, maybe he'd already forgotten the whole incident. I didn't really know. In any case, it seemed best just to let it be water under the bridge.
Except, of course, that you can't actually do that.
Every interaction that I had with him from that time forward was always colored by the fact that I'd once accused him of something he hadn't done and had never apologized for it. Eventually, as you can tell from the email exchange, we came to have a functional working relationship, but we never became friends or even just friendly coworkers.
So, you see, in a way, my email to him is an attempt to say "I'm sorry" and to acknowledge that I know he is a better person than the kind of person I accused him of being. I hope he saw it in there somewhere, hiding inside the mundane well-wishes of one employee who is staying on to another employee who has decided to go.
Good luck to you, Dan. I wish you well in your new endeavors.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Land Shark
So, tonight I thought I'd write a little bit about why I call my blog "Candy Gram".
Growing up, I heard bits and pieces about a Saturday Night Live skit involving a land shark. My parents weren't regular viewers, but they'd watch SNL from time to time. Anyhow, at some point they'd seen one of the land shark skits and were talking about it one evening in my presence. Being about 5 or 6 at the time, the idea of a shark on land wasn't as funny to me as it was to the adult world. Even after my parents had reassured me that there were no such things as land sharks, I remember being scared that they might be wrong and I could wake up one night to a shark hovering over my bed.
Well, obviously that never happened.
What did happen is that I got older and realized that rather than being a threat, a land shark is pretty funny. In fact, as I got older, I started to realize that a lot of things I'd been afraid of weren't so bad. Looking at them from the other side of childhood, I began to see them as silly or ridiculous -- like a shark, hunting on land. Anyhow, in some way, as I matured, "land shark" came to represent the bogarts that inhabit the silly, irrational, superstitious part of my inner world: more funny than frightening when you see them for what they really are.
So what's all of this got to do with my blog's name? Well, the most well-known skit of the land shark has the land shark trying to get a woman to open the door by pretending to deliver what? That's right -- a candy gram.
What's that? I've got to go. I think I hear someone at the door.
Growing up, I heard bits and pieces about a Saturday Night Live skit involving a land shark. My parents weren't regular viewers, but they'd watch SNL from time to time. Anyhow, at some point they'd seen one of the land shark skits and were talking about it one evening in my presence. Being about 5 or 6 at the time, the idea of a shark on land wasn't as funny to me as it was to the adult world. Even after my parents had reassured me that there were no such things as land sharks, I remember being scared that they might be wrong and I could wake up one night to a shark hovering over my bed.
Well, obviously that never happened.
What did happen is that I got older and realized that rather than being a threat, a land shark is pretty funny. In fact, as I got older, I started to realize that a lot of things I'd been afraid of weren't so bad. Looking at them from the other side of childhood, I began to see them as silly or ridiculous -- like a shark, hunting on land. Anyhow, in some way, as I matured, "land shark" came to represent the bogarts that inhabit the silly, irrational, superstitious part of my inner world: more funny than frightening when you see them for what they really are.
So what's all of this got to do with my blog's name? Well, the most well-known skit of the land shark has the land shark trying to get a woman to open the door by pretending to deliver what? That's right -- a candy gram.
- [Scene: A New York apartment. Someone knocks on the door.]
- Woman: [not opening the door] Yes?
- Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Arlsburgerhhh?
- Woman: What?
- Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Johannesburrrr?
- Woman: Who is it?
- Voice: [pause] Flowers.
- Woman: Flowers for whom?
- Voice: [long pause] Plumber, ma'am.
- Woman: I don't need a plumber. You're that clever shark, aren't you?
- Voice: [pause] Candygram.
- Woman: Candygram, my foot. Get out of here before I call the police. You're the shark, and you know it.
- Voice: I'm only a dolphin, ma'am.
- Woman: A dolphin? Well...okay. [opens door]
- [Huge latex and foam-rubber shark head lunges through open door, chomps down on woman's head, and drags her out of the apartment, all while the Jaws attack music is playing.]
What's that? I've got to go. I think I hear someone at the door.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Inaugural Address
So, here it is -- my first post. My internal editor is going crazy right now. It doesn't help that I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish with this blog. Am I going to try to be funny? Serious? Am I writing this for an audience? For myself? I don't know. I guess I'll work it out as I go.
I just reread that first part (internal editor, remember?) Man, this is going to be boring crap! So I guess at least one thing is decided -- I'll be writing for myself.
So anyway, I've been thinking lately about what it means to be alive.
Recently, my family and I took a long vacation and traveled across the country visiting friends and family. Everywhere we went we did things fairly spontaneously. (If you knew my wife, you'd know why I felt like I had to add the qualifier -- she's definitely an organizer, even on vacation.) We spent a lot of time outside and did more things in that one month than I normally do in a couple of years. We went four-wheeling, boating, rafting, swimming, and hiking. We visited national parks, museums, and local attractions. I read six books, just because I wanted to, not because I needed know what was in them. I took some risks just for the thrill of it -- minor things, sure, it's not like I'm Lee Majors (that's right, I'm old enough to have watched "The Fall Guy").
Coming home, I realized how arid my emotional life has become. So much of what I do in my life, I do just because I have to. It needs to be done. So I do it. Look, I know life isn't supposed to be all fun and games. And, besides, that is not really what I'm getting at. I know I lead a blessed life: I live in a country at peace; I've got a beautiful wife and four wonderful, creative, exasperating children; I've got my health; I've got food to eat; I'm well-paid; I don't have to beg on the streets -- I could go on forever.
The thing is, I want it all to mean something. Emotionally, I mean.
I'll be upfront with you. Metaphysically, speaking, I do think it all means something. I don't think this world is all there is. I believe we're down here for something. I believe there is a God who sent us here and who watches over us as our lives unfold. But believing that doesn't mean I always feel like it means something. A lot of times all of the high-minded ideals I keep trying to make a part of my life just feel like another checklist of things I've got to do.
Go to work - check.
Read with my kids - check.
Serve in my church - check.
Try to be more helpful around the house - check. (Well, sometimes, anyway.)
Serve a stranger in need - check. (Alright, I guess if I'm being honest, more often than not I'm more like the overly busy priest and Levite than I am like the Good Samaritan.)
Be a better person - check? uncheck? (How do you know?)
Take out the garbage - check.
Sometimes they get done, and, as you can see from my comments, sometimes they don't.
I guess that's the thing. There are so many things to do in this life, things that have to be done, that really don't matter all that much, they seem to crowd out the things that do. I mean, I wonder if that priest and Levite weren't just too busy to stop and help. They probably muttered under their breath as they walked by, "I'm sure he'll be fine. Somebody's bound to stop and help him. I'd do it, but I've got to get to the temple and burn things."
Going on that trip made me realize that I don't want to be that guy anymore. I want to do things that matter. I want to stop living my life based on the things I have to do and start doing the things that matter to me.
The question is, will I?
I just reread that first part (internal editor, remember?) Man, this is going to be boring crap! So I guess at least one thing is decided -- I'll be writing for myself.
So anyway, I've been thinking lately about what it means to be alive.
Recently, my family and I took a long vacation and traveled across the country visiting friends and family. Everywhere we went we did things fairly spontaneously. (If you knew my wife, you'd know why I felt like I had to add the qualifier -- she's definitely an organizer, even on vacation.) We spent a lot of time outside and did more things in that one month than I normally do in a couple of years. We went four-wheeling, boating, rafting, swimming, and hiking. We visited national parks, museums, and local attractions. I read six books, just because I wanted to, not because I needed know what was in them. I took some risks just for the thrill of it -- minor things, sure, it's not like I'm Lee Majors (that's right, I'm old enough to have watched "The Fall Guy").
Coming home, I realized how arid my emotional life has become. So much of what I do in my life, I do just because I have to. It needs to be done. So I do it. Look, I know life isn't supposed to be all fun and games. And, besides, that is not really what I'm getting at. I know I lead a blessed life: I live in a country at peace; I've got a beautiful wife and four wonderful, creative, exasperating children; I've got my health; I've got food to eat; I'm well-paid; I don't have to beg on the streets -- I could go on forever.
The thing is, I want it all to mean something. Emotionally, I mean.
I'll be upfront with you. Metaphysically, speaking, I do think it all means something. I don't think this world is all there is. I believe we're down here for something. I believe there is a God who sent us here and who watches over us as our lives unfold. But believing that doesn't mean I always feel like it means something. A lot of times all of the high-minded ideals I keep trying to make a part of my life just feel like another checklist of things I've got to do.
Go to work - check.
Read with my kids - check.
Serve in my church - check.
Try to be more helpful around the house - check. (Well, sometimes, anyway.)
Serve a stranger in need - check. (Alright, I guess if I'm being honest, more often than not I'm more like the overly busy priest and Levite than I am like the Good Samaritan.)
Be a better person - check? uncheck? (How do you know?)
Take out the garbage - check.
Sometimes they get done, and, as you can see from my comments, sometimes they don't.
I guess that's the thing. There are so many things to do in this life, things that have to be done, that really don't matter all that much, they seem to crowd out the things that do. I mean, I wonder if that priest and Levite weren't just too busy to stop and help. They probably muttered under their breath as they walked by, "I'm sure he'll be fine. Somebody's bound to stop and help him. I'd do it, but I've got to get to the temple and burn things."
Going on that trip made me realize that I don't want to be that guy anymore. I want to do things that matter. I want to stop living my life based on the things I have to do and start doing the things that matter to me.
The question is, will I?
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